The Giza Archives Project
The Giza Archives Project
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The cemeteries surrounding the Giza Pyramids, arguably the most famous archaeological site in the world, contain thousands of tombs, temples, inscriptions, wall scenes, statues, and artifacts. It is an unparalleled primary source for all aspects of Egyptian civilization during the Old Kingdom (ca. 2500 BCE) and beyond. Three major expeditions (American, German/Austrian, and Egyptian) excavated much of the site between 1902 and 1942, and more modern excavations continue today. But the archaeological data—objects, photos, drawings, plans, and notes—are inaccessibly strewn all over the world in diverse museums and university archives.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) houses the world’s single largest archive of archaeological materials from Giza. With the help of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Giza Archives Project at the MFA is providing a centralized online Giza repository for scholarly research. Now in its second phase (2004–2007), the Project is poised to expand its Giza resource with international collaboration (US, Europe, Egypt) in order to provide access to the entire site of Giza, regardless of excavator or expedition. To date, there are 69,706 items on the website—photos, records of objects, people, drawings, diaries, and manuscripts. In terms of personnel, more than 400 Boston-area students, MFA volunteers, and paid Egyptological and technological staff have contributed to the Project.
Using the “TMS” database and “eMuseum” web interface (both from Gallery Systems, New York), monthly uploads refresh and expand the Giza website. In order to cater to the wide range of online researchers’ expertise, there are three search portals: “Quick Search,” “Advanced Search,” and “Visual Search.” The “Advanced Search” portal also provides an Egyptological thesaurus, allowing users to hunt for images based on image content. “Visual Search” acts as a simplified Google Earth and Google Maps Street View portal, allowing users to browse the entire Giza site from the air, click on individual tombs to see relevant data, or view the site on the ground in 360-degree QTVR (Quicktime Virtual Reality) interactive panoramas from over 1,200 standpoints. In addition, an online Giza “Library” offers free downloads of more than 400 OCR-converted PDF files of Giza scholarly monographs and journal articles. Next steps include integrating and linking these bibliographical references into the Giza databases, and including the archaeological data housed in Berkeley, Cairo, Berlin, Hildesheim, Leipzig, Philadelphia, Turin, and Vienna.
Peter Der Manuelian
Giza Archives Project Director
LINKS:
The Giza website: www.mfa.org/giza
“Virtual Pyramids—Real Research. The Giza Archives Project Goes Live Online.” KMT 16 (2005), pp. 68–80 (5.8 mb): http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf%20library/manuelian_kmt16_2005.pdf
“The Giza Archives Project.” Egyptian Archaeology 28 (2006), pp. 31–33 (1.1 mb): http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf%20library/manuelian_eg_arch28_2006.pdf
