Category: Main

The sands of Egypt, well, Weston…..

I visited the Sand Sculpture Festival at Weston-Super-Mare over the weekend, the theme of which this year is ‘When I grow up’. I was delighted to see the entry entitled Archaeologist, which was a fantastic composition featuring grand carvings of Horus and Anubis, a sphinx, and what may have been the ram-headed god Khnum all…


Harnessing the power of undergraduate students

Three Cardiff University undergraduate students have begun to work on GIS projects using Digital Saqqara data. This work is being undertaken for their GIS module assessment. Whilst the GIS project work will provide new data for Digital Saqqara, it will also enable the students to gain new experience in GIS techniques and working within a…


The Mummy Pits of Ancient Egypt

This fascinating topic is the focus of Tessa Baber’s PhD. The mummy pits, found at sites across Egypt, were purported to contain thousands of mummified bodies and were a focus of interest for early travelers in the country. They provided both a source of souvenirs for those returning from their travels back to Europe and…


Digital Past 2016

A long and somewhat convoluted train journey took me to Llandudno this week for the Digital Past conference, where I presented a paper on the Digital Saqqara project. This paper was weighted towards the methodological and technical approach and why the project was important for Late Period Egyptology. The paper was well received and I…


BANEA 2016

I had a very good day at the British Association of Near Eastern Archaeology conference yesterday. I met some interesting people and engaged in some insightful debate. I think my paper was well received and it generated some interesting questions and discussion. Many thanks to the BANEA organisers and in particular Ralph Häussler and Gian…


The boat-grave and model estate of tomb S3357

Throughout the (ongoing) process of compiling a comprehensive GIS of the North Saqqara necropolis I have encountered a number of errors and omissions which have been printed and quite often repeated in various maps of the archaeological site. A recent conundrum that befell me came from the location of the boat-grave and model estate of…


Mitigating asset loss in large drawing files

An error in one of my CAD Civil files has caused me to rethink the way I approach large drawing files that contain multiple assets. All of the assets that comprise my landscape model (digitised contours, spot heights, breaklines, TIN surface, structure models) were internal components of the main drawing file. This means that if…


EES Study Day – On the trail of Imhotep

Yesterday I attended the Egypt Exploration Society study day in London, which took place within the faux Egyptian façade of Greater London House. The day was thoroughly interesting and I had the chance to catch up with friends and discuss projects. I met some very nice people during the day, all enthusiastic about Egyptology. The…


British Association of Near Eastern Archaeology

The British Association of Near Eastern Archaeology conference is being held at the Schools of Archaeology History, and Anthropology and Classics at Lampeter (University of Wales Trinity Saint David) from January 6th-January 8th 2016 (http://www.banea2016.org/). My paper ‘(Re)constructing the sacred landscape of Saqqara’ has been accepted for the Sacred Landscapes session. (Re)constructing the sacred landscape…


Digital Past 2016

The Digital Past 2016 conference will be held in Llandudno on February 10th and 11th. Visit the website for more details: http://digitalpast2016.blogspot.co.uk/. I will be attending and presenting the following paper: Digital Saqqara – from bits of paper to bytes of data Traditionally Egyptologists have relied upon their extensive knowledge of published literature to understand…