ancient Egypt

Archaeologists Are Using Imaging Technology to Capture 2,000 Years of Ancient Graffiti Scratched Into the Walls of an Egyptian Temple


If Egyptian temples are the bold declarations of the rich and powerful, the graffiti etched into their walls are the voices of the common people. At least, that’s the chosen analogy of Nick Hedley, a geography professor at Simon Fraser University.

It’s Hedley’s expertise in spatial reality capture, however, rather than ancient Egypt, that brought him onto a project striving to record the Temple of Isis on Agilkia Island in southern Egypt. The graffiti inscriptions—written in Demotic, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and French, along with the myriad figures of hunting scenes, feet, and gods and goddesses—tell the stories of those who have visited the site for 2,000 years.

Hedley is, in his own telling, an unconventional spatial data scientist, one concerned as much with the visual experiences his skills make possible as the practice of purely capturing data. In 2019, an exhibition he designed at the Museum of Vancouver showed how extended reality might be used to bring ancient Greece alive and connected him to the Temple of Isis project.

Egypt Graffiti

Hedley overlooking the Temple of Isis. Photo: Nick Hedley/PTGP 2021-2023.

The popularity of studying graffiti at ancient sites has swelled in recent years, but at the UNESCO site, most academic research has focused on textual graffiti, rather than the figural graffiti lining the walls, columns and roof, despite the fact they are roughly equal in number—around 1,400 items. Among them are outlines of feet (something like an ancient “I was here” marking), devotional impressions of gods, and hashes for board games.

“These inscriptions tell us something about many types of people and when you look at them up close,” Hedley told Midnight Publishing Group News. “You can almost imagine them standing here today, quietly scratching these figures into the sandstone.”

Hedley recording ancient graffiti on roof of Mammisi at Philae. Photo: Nick Hedley/PTGP 2021-2023.

Previously, similar archeological studies have relied on digitizing traced sketches to create two-dimensional plans, but Sabrina Higgins, a Simon Fraser University archeologist who has been working on the project since 2020, realized Hedley’s skills in photogrammetry, raking light, and reflectance transformation imaging would produce a far more accurate model. Photogrammetry, which builds a 3D model out of photographs, can capture markings less than a millimeter deep. It’s also significantly faster, achieving work that usually takes years in a matter of days.

The first stage has focused on the birth house, or Mammisis in Coptic, a small chapel focused on the nativity of a god that is connected to a large temple.

Graffiti being documented at Temple of Isis in Egypt. Photo: Nick Hedley/PTGP 2021-2023.

“My spatial reality capture work will produce the new definitive set of digital wall plans for the figural graffiti on the Mammisi,” Hedley said. “In due course, I will also present the new 3D model of the Mammisi, from which point it will be used to drive multiple fundamentally new types of archaeological spatial analysis.”

The project, which began in 2016, involves University of Ottawa archeologists and funding from the Swiss Institute of Archeology and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Built in 362 B.C.E., the Temple of Isis was originally located on the island of Philae, believed to be one of burial sites of Egyptian deity Osiris. It is located on the border between Nubia and ancient Egypt and was an important pilgrimage site through the 5th century. Following repeated flooding caused by the Aswan Dam it was moved to Agilkia Island under the guide of UNESCO in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Archaeologists Have Discovered 110 Tombs From Three Different Eras of Ancient Egyptian History in the Nile Delta


Excavations at an ancient site in the Nile Delta have uncovered no less than 110 tombs dating from three different periods of ancient Egyptian history.

The find includes 68 oval-shaped tombs from the predynastic Buto Period (6000–3150 B.C.), 37 rectangular-shaped tombs from the Second Intermediate Period (1782–1570 B.C., also known as the era of Hyksos, a Semitic people that ruled Egypt at the time), and five oval-shaped tombs from the Naqada III period (3200–3000 B.C.), according to Smithsonian Magazine.

“This is an extremely interesting cemetery because it combines some of the earliest periods of Egyptian history with another important era, the time of the Hyksos,” Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, told Reuters. “Egyptologists are working to understand how the Egyptians and the Hyksos lived together and to what degree the former took on Egyptian traditions.”

The discovery was announced in statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which plans to continue excavations on the site. Artifacts uncovered to date include stoves and ovens, pottery, silver rings, funerary furniture, scarab amulets, pottery, and bricks from old buildings.

Scarab amulets from the archeological site of 110 tombs at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Scarab amulets from the archeological site of 110 tombs at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The dead were buried in squatting positions in the Buto period tombs, while Hyksos period burials were done face-up, their heads pointing to the west. Both the Buto and Hyksos tombs included the remains of babies in jars, an ancient burial practice that remains mysterious.

“But there’s always the interpretation that the jar is almost like a womb, so basically the idea is to return [the] baby back into Mother Earth, or into the symbolic protection of his mother,” archaeologist Yoav Arbel told Live Science of a similar discovery last year.

Though maintaining tourism has been a struggle in Egypt over the past decade—first due to revolution, and more recently because of the ongoing pandemic—the government hopes discoveries such as these will encourage overseas travelers to visit.

Earlier this month, Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, marked the opening of Cairo’s long-awaited National Museum of Egyptian Civilization with an elaborate procession across the city of 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies.

See more photos from the newly uncovered tombs below.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Artifacts from the archeological site of 110 tombs at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Artifacts from the archeological site of 110 tombs at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A human skeleton from a tomb at the Nile Delta. Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

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