ISLAMABAD, May 19: While visitors gaze in wonder through the glass showcasing the antique unrivaled collection of Gandhara Art in the Taxila Museum, its concerned managers are drawn to the new but worrying additions high up on the walls.

Roughly a year back, few cracks, thin as hairline fractures, had started appearing.

Managers then started paying more attention to these cracks which started appearing all around the 85-year-old structure.

`They started extending. Some are more than just hairline cracks now,` said one of the senior officials at the Department of Archaeology and Museums (DOAM).

Over a dozen small rectangular glass pieces have been pasted with an industrial material across these cracks. `If the cracks open up, the glass will break and we will know a lot more is needed to save the building,` said the senior official. So far, the best explanation from DOAM was that the entire Taxila Museum, built in 1928 by famous archaeologist John Marshal, was sitting on the ancient site of Bhir Mound, buried under loose earth.

The partially excavated 5th Century BC ruins of the Greek period are buried several feet underground, 20 meters away from the building in the back lawn. It was evidence that the location probably hid more history underground than above.

DOAM believed water, through rain and uncontrolled watering of the green lawns around the museum, had seeped underground and weakened the soil underneath the structure.

Although John Marshal had excavated the site before construction of the museum, there remains plenty of space to be excavated.

In 2004, loose soil caused a depression in the road just in front of the museum.

`During the repair work, the excavation machine dug out soggy and muddy earth, and we could not figure out why the soil was wet. We certainly did not realise that the soil could pos-sibly be loose in the entire area until these cracks made us think of all possible reasons.

We cannot rule out the weight of the solid stone museum, whose two-and-a-half feet thick and 22 feet high walls are pressing into soft earth,` the official said.

Deputy Director Taxila Museum Irshad Hussain believed the cracks had stopped extending as a drain had been built around the museum to carry rain water away.

`The structure is more than 80 years old.

Then there are environmental conditions that take a toll on the building, including earthquakes,` said Irshad Hussain, explaining further that the damp environment around the museum had been home to termites for many years.

However, the DOAM argued that the museum should have outlasted most historical architectures built by the British.

The walls were more solid than the Lahore and Peshawar brick museums constructed by the British, adding that the new gallery, built in 1998, was nowhere near as solid.

`The new section had been built in a rush, and because of cracks, had to be developed soon after it was completed. And unlike old structures, the architects ignored the fact that the extension was being built on a site that had not been excavated, making the soil under the structure even weaker,` the DOAM official explained.

A wall of the first curator` early residence, built in 1928, had also collapsed due to neglect, but Irshad Hussain said his hands were tied because of shortage of funds.

`We are trying to bring certain changes by June, but we need a lot more funds,` he said.

Taxila Museum is more than a home to thousands of artifacts. Its foundation stone, laid by Governor General of India Lord Chelmsford, was built by world renowned archaeologist John Marshal, and hence the museum itself is part of history.