Thursday, May 31, 2007

Giza Archives Project - Finding the Pharaohs

http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf%20library/tufts_magazine_spr_2007.pdf
Tufts Magazine, Spring 2007 (a publication of Tufts University), has featured the Giza Archives Project, in a paper entitled Finding the Pharaohs, by Helen Ragovin. This is an interesting article in its own right, but the photographs are exceptional - black and white photographs recording the original excavations at Giza in the early 1900s:
"For 40 years before his death in 1954, a larger-than-life Indiana native named George Reisner reigned over the excavation of the Giza Necropolis, home of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. Considered by many to be the father of scientific archaeology, Reisner cared about documentation, not treasure hunting. He unearthed a breathtaking collection of antiquities, much of it now housed at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), which, along with Harvard University, funded Reisner's work. Being a careful chronicler, he also amassed thousands of documents, maps, and photographs. There are far more items than any museum could display.
The whole vast assortment is gradually becoming available online, thanks to the Giza Archives Project (www.mfa.org/giza). The project's director, Peter Der Manuelian—a lecturer in Egyptology and archaeology in Tufts' Department of Classics—has enlisted hundreds of Tufts students and other volunteers to help sort and digitize the archive's contents. "Through technology, we can put the archaeological site of Giza together again," he says.
Visitors can view the striking dark-stone statue of the pharaoh Menkaure standing beside an unknown queen, now on display at the MFA. Then they can read Reisner's diary entry for January 18, 1910 (the day the statue was discovered), view other statues with similar features, and download reference works."
See the above page for the full article and accompanying photographs.

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