Sunday, April 22, 2007

Weekly Websites

This project focuses on the site of Quseir al-Qadim on the southern Egyptian Red Sea coast, and its surrounding landscape. The project is a collaboration between researchers from a number of institutions world wide and is particularly focussed on the sharing and representation of archaeological knowledge.
The site of Quseir al-Qadim (old Quseir) is eight kilometres north of the modern town of Quseir, on the Egyptian Red Sea coast. Four seasons of fieldwork have now been completed on site. The current project is directed by David Peacock, Lucy Blue and Stephanie Moser from the Department of Archaeology.
The site is believed to be the port of Myos Hormos, referred to by Pliny, Strabo and other ancient authors, and thus a very important part of the route between the East and the Mediterranean. The fieldwork programme for 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 had three aspects: excavation of the ancient town, a study of the sabkha behind the site, which was once the ancient harbour, and a study of the immediate hinterland in order to understand connections with Coptos (Qift) and the Nile.

Mons Porphyrites Project
http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Projects/default.asp?ProjectID=34
In five seasons, between 1994-1998 the Departments of Archaeology at the Universities of Southampton and Exeter surveyed and excavated at the quarry complex of Mons Porphrites. Mons Porphrites was the source of purple Imperial Porphyry, much sought after in the Roman and Byzantine worlds and which has continued to exercise symbolic influence in western society. The quarries lie in the Gebel Dokhan, or 'smoky mountain', itelf situated in the Red Sea mountains of eastern Egypt. The purple Imperial Porphyry is found nowhere else in the world, except in these mountains (together with other types of Porphyry) and the Romans went to extraordinary lengths to acquire substantial amounts of it.

Bir Umm Fawakhir Byzantine/Coptic Gold Mine
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9703/Meyer-9703.html
"The Bir Umm Fawakhir site, surveyed by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 1992, 1993, and 1996, is the first entire ancient Egyptian gold-mining community to be studied archaeologically. Located in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt, Bir Umm Fawakhir was long believed to be a Roman caravan station serving traffic traveling from the Nile to Red Sea but was actually a 5th-6th century Byzantine/Coptic gold-mining town. The sprawling settlement is estimated to have housed slightly more than 1,000 people who worked the mines riddling the mountainsides and reduced and washed the ore."

Egyptian Study Society
http://www.egyptstudy.org/
Navigate in the left hand navigation bar, first to The Ostracton and then to The Ostracon Archives. The Egyptian Study Society lists some of the archive articles from its journal on its website.

Old photos of the Giza Plateau
http://www.gizapyramid.com/oldphotos1.htm
Three pages of photographs taken from the book Egypt Caught in Time by Colin Osman and from the collection of photos and postcards from the Great Pyramid of Giza Research Assocation.

Egyptomania: Ancient Egypt at the movies
http://www.wepwawet.nl/films/
"This site offers an elaborate overview of motion pictures and tv movies that prominently feature Egyptology and ancient Egypt, its monuments or sites. Looking for those magnificent mummy films, or films featuring pyramids or Cleopatra? This is the site to visit!"

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