Standards-9985 - Conservation of Egyptology treasures

Standards-9985

Conservation of Egyptology treasures

Still n Video Cataloging

In order to create a uniform digital catalog, specific information belongs in specific fields.

Because of human error or neglect chaos will be involved.

The way to keep things in sequence is a data entry system.

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Explanation of standard fields for every entry.

Hieroglyph-Data-Entry

Title: Every artifact must be given a standard title. This must be used because the title will also become part of the file name. This will allow a researcher to kick out a specific record or when doing a word search, the title of every file that has that key word will be displayed.

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Original Location: This is where the artifact was first discovered. If it is some vague location (like Luxor), then that would raise a red flag. If it is given a specific location, then the researcher can compare the artifact with the given site where it was found.

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Present Location (if moved): If the artifact has been moved to some museum, then the researcher can search that museum to obtain an image of it. I get gobs of images from web sites and the fact is, there is no way for me to tell any one this is what the actual piece looks like. When I use images, I crop them, add pics or info, stretch detail, sharpen..

As images of artifacts are put to use, odds are you are not seeing what the original piece actually looks like.

An actual researcher who wanted to document their work, would want to go to the horses mouth... a museum where it is held.

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Language : Hieroglyph, Cuneform, Greek, Latin

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Pages: (default 1) If it is a stela, wall painting .. the default is 1. If it is on papyrus, it could be multiple pages. This reference is necessary for line numbering.

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Permit Records (if moved out of Egypt). Because fakes and forgeries are a mult-million dollar business, one check would be the documentation allowing a person to remove an artifact from Egypt. If there is no documentation, a red flag ... if there is documentation of a permit, the permit will give a full description of the piece that was removed from Egypt.

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Link to full image: Any image transcribed should have photographs of the original image.

Comparing a photograph with a sketch, would allow the researcher to give evidence the sketch is legitimate.

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Link to transcription: Because translation is NOT an exact science, there may be multiple translation of the same hieroglyph. Those who follow, will probably make notes as to why they chose a different translation.

The scholar could read the reasoning and decide for themselves, which pumpkin they are going to buy.

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Information about the person who discovered this artifact: This would give insight about the creditability of the person said to have discovered the particular piece.

I often read such things as "a woman found it" ... a boy found it ... an adventurer found it.

Many times these people are never seen. It is kind of like a man caught with a gun and telling the cops, "a guy in the bar sold it to me"

"An adventurer" found it? Tom Sawyer, a tourist/rug salesman found it on the streets on his vacation to Egypt?

What you know or do not know about the person said to have found the piece is a measurement of it's creditability.

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When was it found: This information will be useful in cross checking the piece and documentation.

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As the grade school story went, a guy caught a leprechaun and made him promise to tie a ribbon around the tree where his gold was buried.

The leprechaun agreed and the next day the guy saw a ribbon tied around every tree in the woods.

In some tombs there are hundreds of different hieroglyphic text about different things, in different rooms and different walls.

Nail down the specific location:

Title of the specific hieroglyph

Name of the tomb

Which room

Which wall

123 inches from the right corner

83 inches from the bottom

Every square inch of a tomb should be photographed. Before going to a tomb, a diagram of the tomb should be created. Before starting to photograph a wall, a picture of the diagram ... the wall you are about to photograph should be shot, then a systematic recording of that wall.

At night after the tourist are going, would be perfect to set up ladders and lighting to do the job right. Most tombs could be completely video taped in less than a week.

By video taping walls future generations could see that image in relation to other hieroglyphic information around it.

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Following the video taping crew, a still image crew would take high resolutions of each segment (Noting it's location with in the structure).

Being exposed to the elements, in time the images and hieroglyphics will vanish.

Before it happens is the time to document these treasures for the future.

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ARTIST WELCOME ... BUT

Because they can examine the composition of the paint, scientist can project the color temperature when it was originally painted

Any section that is selected for reproduction should be created with the appropriate colors.. BUT before it would be allowed to be entered in the catalogue, an image of the original section would be placed above.

This is the appearance of the piece when photographed

This is what trained artist believe it looked at when painted.

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These guys are involved in a very important work

http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/epi/

If you have some kind of special talent, you might see what you could do.

For further information on contributions to the work of the Survey, contact the Development Office at (773) 702-9513 or oi-membership@uchicago.edu

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There must be hundreds of tombs or outside images/hieroglyphics that are over looked.

Adopt a site the big boys have no interest in ... Egyptian school teacher? What a great project for your class.

As for those reading the thoughts on hieroglyphics, I will integrate similar fields into the descriptions.

~

zendz