Eleven Myanmar, 21 April 2017
Thein Lwin, deputy director-general of the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library, said: “The frescoes in the Myinkaba cave pagoda are one of the finest from the Bagan era. Thanks to the Unesco [UN cultural body], the frescoes look shinier than they were before. We will clean and take documents of the frescoes. The detailed work can take up to 10 days.”
The earthquake did not affect the frescoes in the cave but the ones in the stupa, a dome-shaped structure, above it.
Kyi Lin, a fresco expert at the department, said: “We worked together with the UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] to maintain the Myinkaba frescoes in 1983. We contracted Unesco in 1975 after a 6.5-magnitude quake hit Bagan in July that year. Then we signed another contract in 1981. Then I went to Italy for six months to study frescoes. There shouldn’t be a gap between the wall and the masonry. You can find it out by knocking the surface of the relief. If a hollow sound returns, you know there is a gap and that it cannot withstand a tremor.”
Source: Frescoes being repaired in Bagan | Eleven Myanmar
