The Ministry of Antiquities has launched a project to document, index, and digitise rock art and inscriptions all over Egypt, including rock art sites in Sinai, the Eastern and Western Deserts, al-Gilf al-Kabeer, and Aswan.
According to Hisham al-Leithi, Director-General of the Egyptian Antiquities Registration Centre at the Ministry, the idea behind the project was to preserve the rock art and inscriptions which are of inestimable historical value, especially given that most of them lie in remote desert areas hard to guard.
“State-of-the-art technology is being used to set up a data base of all rock art and inscriptions in Egypt,” Dr Leithi noted. High-resolution images and statistical maps are being drawn through use of modern photogrametric techniques and Reflective Transformational Imaging (RTI)
According to Ayman Ashmawy, head of the ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, the first phase of the project has already started in sites near Suez. These, he explained, include inscriptions in Nabataean script and ancient Egyptian texts, as well as a number of engravings of animal scenes.
“The 2018 work plan,” Mr Ashmawy said, “expands the work to rock art sites in South Sinai.”
Watani International
22 January 2018