Theban Mapping Project website updated
Theban Mapping Project (Kent Weeks)
It has been over a year since our last report to you, and both the Theban Mapping Project and Thebes itself have undergone several changes..
For example, there is a new addition to our website that I think you will find especially useful, a bibliography of Theban West Bank archaeological sites. It is now up and running and offers over 5,000 references that describe tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, outlying wadis and the Tombs of the Nobles, plus all the memorial temples, shrines, villages, graffiti, predynastic remains, and Christian sites. The entries include publications from early in the 19th century to the end of 2007, and deal with excavation, recording, conservation, history, analyses—everything but grammatical analyses of a monument’s texts.. There is also a list of abbreviations of journals and series, plus a list of variant spellings of the names of private tomb owners that should help students and scholars find their way through the complexities of Egyptological literature. We will regularly update the bibliography, and we hope to add a search engine to make it an even more useful tool in the near future. Your comments about (and additions to) the bibliography are, of course, enthusiastically welcomed.
Over the next few months, we will add to our website nearly 900 color photos of decorated Valley of the Kings tomb walls. Many of these images will be Zoomifiable, meaning that one will be able to admire entire wall scenes, or zoom in and examine in detail the brush strokes in an ancient artist’s rendering of an owl, or examine the corrections made by senior scribes to an apprentice’s drawing. With the addition of these images, the website now offers comprehensive coverage of most of the decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The photographs, bibliography, a growing number of historical images, plus our detailed architectural plans, conservation reports, and tomb descriptions, make the website a comprehensive one-stop source for information on the Valley of the Kings.
Our TMP staff spent most of 2007 helping the Supreme Council of Antiquities begin the implementation of the TMP’s Valley of the Kings Management Plan. This is urgent business, as the number of tourists visiting KV can now reach over 7,000 each day, a number that the valley cannot safely handle without careful planning. (Our Management Plan is available on the website; just click here.) A new parking area for tour buses, an improved tram line from the new Visitors Center to the KV entrance, new tourist shops, toilets and piped water, and a cafeteria—all are part of the plan. We undertook a major—and highly successful—test of LED lighting in the tomb of Rameses VI, a tomb recently re-opened to the public after a three-year-long closure, on a limited basis and at an additional charge. Hopefully, the demonstration lighting system will be made permanent one day soon and, eventually, will be added to all the KV tombs regularly visited by tourists. Within the next few months we will install electronic temperature and humidity recorders in all tombs open to the public to monitor the effects of visitors on each tomb’s environmental condition. We are also working to devise new ticketing systems that will help control the numbers of tourists visiting the tomb to prevent overcrowding and reduce damage from sudden changes in temperature and humidity.
- Conservation: More About The Work To Be Carried Out On The Tomb Of Tutankhamun
Al Ahram Weekly Almost nine decades after its discovery the tomb of Tutankhamun is to be comprehensively restored, reports Nevine El-Aref Click to view caption Ancient Egyptian tombs are attracting more and more visitors. Their very popularity, however,...
- Report: Theban Mapping Project Progress Report
Theban Mapping Project (Kent Weeks) Also available as aPDF (management plan only, not the report on KV5) Kent Weeks reports on the work at KV5 and the development of a management plan for the Valley of the Kings. The section dealing with the management...
- What's Going On In Luxor?
Al Ahram Weekly (Jill Kamil) An excellent survey of both the current work to conserve monuments and the increasing number of threats to the well being of such sites from a number of different sources. We all know that the "mansions of millions of years",...
- Conservation In Egypt
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/columnist/story/0,,1932420,00.html An article looking at conservation issues in Egypt, with particular reference to the Valley of the Kings: "Kent Weeks, of the American University of Cairo, launched the Theban Mapping...
- Theban Mapping Project Newsletter
http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/mailinglist.htmlThe Theban Mapping Project sent out their latest newsletter yesterday 2nd July (to subscribe to their newsletter go to the above link). I can forward a copy of the message to anyone who wants it. The...