In my previous post, I reviewed the Grand Egyptian Museum atrium and Tutankhamun: The Immersive Experience. In this post I will address the sculptures of the Grand Staircase, the only display of ancient Egyptian artefacts currently accessible to the visitor, apart from the statues in the atrium and the hanging obelisk. When the museum is fully open, the Grand Staircase will lead to the galleries of museum exhibits, but at the time of writing (February 2024) it can be visited as part of a guided tour that also includes the hanging obelisk and the atrium and follows the immersive Tutankhamun exp ..read more

The courtyard of the Grand Egyptian Museum, with the entrance to the left and the hanging obelisk of Ramses II to the right. The route from the obelisk to the entrance is flanked by colonnades and shallow lakes. (Author photo) The colossus of Ramses II, in position in the atrium of the GEM. (Author photo). The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) at Giza will be Egypt’s modern, state-of-the-art, flagship museum for the country’s ancient past. Located just north of the Giza pyramids, the GEM will provide an opportunity for those short on time to visit both the Giza pyramids and some of the greatest arte ..read more

In my previous posts, I explained how to pan-sharpen and then mosaic Worldview-3 satellite imagery. The final phase of processing the ‘ortho-ready’ imagery is ‘orthorectification‘. To orthorectify the Worldview-3 imagery I used a 2m resolution digital surface model (DSM) generated by Digitalglobe from a stereo-pair of Worldview-2 satellite images of the same area of Middle Egypt as the Worldview-3 imagery. The DSM arrived as a single-band 2m resolution .tif where the value of each 2m pixel represents the surface height (the ground level if it was visible to the sensor, or the top of the tree o ..read more

In my previous post, I explained how to pan-sharpen individual .tifs of high-resolution Worldview-3 satellite imagery. Worldview-3 satellite imagery is provided as a series of .tif tiles covering the area purchased, but because each .tif tile has a slightly different histogram (the frequency of each colour within the image varies from .tif to .tif) the imagery exhibits abrupt discontinuities at the edges of the .tifs. Mosaicking These .tifs now need mosaicking into a single raster image, providing a consistent colour map, and permitting further research into the entire dataset. There are vario ..read more

Stonehenge needs little introduction! A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous archaeological site in England. It is a Neolithic stone circle enclosed within a ditch and bank (the ‘henge’) and surrounded by an extensive prehistoric landscape of barrows, henges, cursus monuments, and other features that reach as far as Avebury and Silbury Hill. For centuries the main road to the south-west of England, now numbered the A303, has run past the stones. Unfortunately, the A303 is now a highly congested modern route, producing considerable noise and pollution. Its proximity ..read more

I have previously written about how archaeological sites as experienced by the public differ from sites as experienced by the archaeologist, how this feeds into misunderstandings of archaeology, and their impact on our society. These issues have once again come to the fore as the summer of 2023 provokes further debate about the approved A303 tunnel scheme near Stonehenge. As with the Prittlewell Prince, the debate reveals a great deal about the public understanding of archaeology, exposing misconceptions about both the nature of archaeology and the role of archaeologists. It also reveals how l ..read more

NOTE: This post includes mention and some distant images of mummified people (sahw). A 3-d display of amulets as they would be situated within a sahw. This popular display was reinstalled from a previous display in the Egypt and Sudan Gallery. (Author Photograph) In February 2023, the Manchester Museum reopened following a major refit. In April I visited the museum, including the refurbished Egypt and Sudan Gallery, and the Golden Mummies exhibition.  The museum is open from 10am Tuesday to Friday and Sunday (from 8am on Saturday) and closes at 5pm every day except Wednesday when closing ..read more

NOTE: Inevitably as this post discusses mummified people it includes images of them and references to them that some may find offensive. Highly decorated mask for a mummified ancient Egyptian with the skin highlighted in gold leaf hinting at the divinity of the deceased (Author photograph at the Golden Mummies exhibition). In my previous post I reviewed Manchester Museum’s recent Golden Mummies exhibition. Although this exhibition has been touring for several years and in development for even longer, its return to the UK in early 2023 was highly topical. In January (presumably on a slow news d ..read more

NOTE: Inevitably as this post discusses an exhibition about mummified people it includes references to them and images of them. Artemidorous, in the Golden Mummies exhibtion. (Author Photograph) The reopened Manchester Museum is currently showing ‘Golden Mummies of Egypt’ in its brand new exhibition hall until the end of December this year (2023). The exhibition focuses on mummification in the Greco-Roman period, when the outside of mummified remains were highly decorated with heavily painted and gilded cartonnage and patterned bandages. The exhibition is free, but visitors are advised to book ..read more

In my previous post, I described how to create a composite true colour Landsat-8 image in ArcGIS for use as a base map. The resulting colour image had the same resolution as the three bands (red, green and blue) combined to create it. Landsat-8 visible light (red, green and blue) bands, near infra-red (NIR), and short-wave infra-red (SWIR) bands are 30m resolution. Thermal infra-red (TIR) bands are 100m resolution. The Landsat-8 also offers a higher resolution band – the panchromatic band (8), with a 15m resolution, which we can use to improve the resolution of our composite image through a pr ..read more