A FTER WELL OVER two centuries of excavation, it is almost impossible to fathom the number of discoveries that have been made in Egypt — to the point that many have receded into history.

“If you dig anywhere in Egypt, you’ll find something,” says Azza Shawarby, national project director of the recently formed Egyptian Antiquities Information System (EAIS). She smiles and adds, “Even if you fall down, you will probably land on an artifact.”

And as the number of historical sites being excavated in Egypt continues to increase, so do the threats to their preservation. Natural menaces such as sand and wind remain threats, and their impact has only been compounded by man-made factors. Urban expansion have already covered many sites, as well as the agricultural growth needed to feed the expanding population. Forgotten sites, many of which are partially excavated and unprotected, easily fall prey to antiquities smugglers and developers.

The need for a single comprehensive database has become more pressing than ever, and since 2000, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has been working with the Finnish Foreign Ministry to create an organization to map and describe all of Egypt’s historical sites.

EAIS recently inaugurated its Geographic Information System for use by various branches of the SCA. The cutting-edge system is a multi-functional computerized tool capable of collecting, storing, retrieving, transforming, displaying and analyzing massive amounts of data.

“There is a very urgent need for this kind of documentation,” says Shawarby. “Throughout the SCA, most of this information existed before, but it’s important to have something like this organized in one place so it can be easily found and distributed.”

Kim Piper Azza Shawarby, the national project director for the Egyptian Antiquities Information System, discusses the publication of the first volume of the program’s projects.

Knowing each site’s exact location and borders is crucial so it can be granted protected status under the law. Amlaak (literally translated as ‘property’), the branch of the SCA that surveys and maintains legal records on cultural heritage sites, is one of the main beneficiaries of EAIS’ work.

“Many different groups are benefiting from our project, but Amlaak is certainly number one. They are perhaps the main reason our project was started,” Shawarby explains. “But it’s so many more people: Local authorities need to know what kind of sites they have. If they want to help develop the site for tourism — or even just for the protection of the sites — they have to know what they have and where exactly it is.

“The main objective of this project when we began six years ago was to safeguard these areas that are important to the Egyptian cultural heritage,” she continues.

Today, EAIS’ database has had to evolve beyond a collection of maps and site boundaries. “It’s much more than just mapping, but the main focus of our program will always be the maps themselves,” Shawarby notes.

Each entry has pages of information: various names used for the site, its condition, detailed descriptions of its archaeological content, threat data, photographs and, of course, maps of varying scale. All of this information is crucial to site preservation and planning, as well as the legal requirements for registering or revising their registration status.

“This is why we include all of the other information along with the maps,” Shawarby explains. “If someone needs to explain to the local or even national officials why a site is important, they will have everything from the condition of the site to the complete description of the archaeological content and the complete list of threats to the site.

“After we have finished mapping a governorate, we visit the governor and present him with a detailed map of our findings, including risks. We focus on one or two sites in our presentation and ask for cooperation, then we suggest solutions and possibilities.”

Prior to the formation of EAIS, Amlaak’s registers suffered from a variety of problems. In some areas, multiple maps of varying scale contradicted each other; maps for other sites were simply missing. Much of their information on location and surface area of sites came from official maps and decrees issued by other government agencies. These maps were not prepared with the historical sites in mind and were often not updated regularly enough for the SCA’s needs.

For example, the maps for the Wadi El-Gedid area came from the Egyptian Survey Authority (ESA) and only displayed the site borders on tracing paper. The overlays had few — and in some cases no — reference points and a high error rate.

“These were all problems that had to be solved,” Shawarby says. “The maps that we need are not necessarily going to be regularly updated by ESA because they have different needs. That’s one of the reasons we’ve become very reliant on satellite maps.”

The nature of their work and the amount of detail that goes into it have proven to be of as much use to groups like the ESA as they are to EAIS, she says, noting, “Most of our maps come from ESA, and we share any new findings with them.”

The collaboration with other groups doesn’t end there. “We’ve reached a point where we have enough information that we are distributing it as much as collecting from other sources,” Shawarby explains. “We are working in cooperation with several Egyptian ministries and organizations as well as international groups; we have a lot of data sharing.” The data sharing program is not intended solely for the archaeological community. Site boundaries and threat assessments are given to urban planners and ministries whose fields can have an effect on a site, such as the Ministry of Agriculture.

The SCA knows that not every site can be saved, but it believes that programs like EAIS will help. “We hope this database is going to be helpful finding the balance between preservation and growth,” says Shawarby.

The struggle to find a balance between antiquities preservation and development is moving onto unfamiliar ground. Mention of Egypt’s cultural heritage usually brings to mind just Pharaonic temples; EAIS’ Cultural Resource Management Project was conceived to try and change this mindset. Cities such as Alexandria and Port Said have more recent architectural histories that are fast disappearing to development. The Gumruk or Ottoman Quarter of Alexandria used to be the heart of the city. While few of the buildings on their own have much historical significance, the area as a whole is a unique representation of Arab-Muslim cities from the nineteenth century. (For a look at Cairo’s disappearing architectural past, see the view/HISTORY, p. 62)

“We have started doing case studies in both Alexandria and Port Said,” Shawarby tells us. “But in Alexandria every time we go to improve our maps, another building has fallen down. The whole area really needs some attention.” The effects of urban development go beyond the buildings being replaced. “When they build something large like an apartment building next to one of these old houses, they have to dig down so far that it destroys the foundations of the old buildings around them, and it’s just a matter of time before they crumble.”

Much of the resistance to their project comes from local residents as well as developers. “We need to convince people that we’re not trying to get these houses declared antiquities and force everyone to move out, but they need some kind of protection. They’re not ancient, but people need to understand that this is part of our cultural heritage as much as the Pyramids are.”

The Cultural Resource Management Project — which has a long way to go before it can celebrate its first birthday — has its work cut out for it. But Shawarby says they’re doing what they can: “At least these sites are documented now, even if they’re not registered.”

While the EAIS has been working on large scale mapping of historical sites, the University of Chicago-funded Chicago House has been documenting antiquities on a smaller scale. Chicago House is continuing an 80-year project called the Epigraphic Survey, which draws on the skills of photographers, artists and Egyptologists.

Dr. Raymond Johnson is the director of the Chicago House. “The goal of our project is to create something so precise that it could stand alone as a replacement for the original — which, unfortunately, has already proved necessary in some cases,” he says.

At its core, the Epigraphic Survey is a collection of enhanced photographs. The photographs alone are not enough to capture all of the detail of a particular monument, especially damaged wall scenes. “First, we take a very-large-format photo,” Johnson explains. The photographs are so large that the negatives can be up to eight by ten inches (20 by 25 centimeters). “Then we come back and rake light across the wall from different angles to bring out every possible detail.”

The series of photographs are developed on a special matte-surface paper that is coated so that it can take pencil and ink lines. An artist takes a 50-by-60 centimeter enlargement of these negatives mounted on a drawing board back to the monument and pencils in any detail that is unclear on the photograph. Next, the print is taken and carefully inked with weighted lines to capture the three-dimensional nature of the relief. Even the damage is drawn in with thin broken lines marking the break.

“It’s really amazing how much detail is added by the artists,” Johnson says.

After the inking process is finished, the photograph is submerged in an iodine bath which dissolves the photographic image, leaving behind only the artists’ rendering. The drawing is then blueprinted and cut into sections called ‘collation sheets.’ The collation sheets are mounted on pieces of stiff white paper and finally turned over to the Egyptologist epigrapher. The epigrapher returns to the site and pencils in corrections and refinements, with explanations written in the margins. The corrected sheet is then returned to the artist, who double-checks the corrections one by one.

“This whole process is repeated twice by two artists and two epigraphers working on the same project. When they’ve finished, they meet up and debate any points of contention and finally it comes to the project director” — pausing, Johnson points his finger at his chest and says, “Well, me” — “for the final check. We have several different pairs of eyes checking and double-checking these. Our work here is about as precise as humanly possible,” he says.

This process, which can last weeks or even months for a single print, has become known as the Chicago House Method. The end product: massive volumes of prints, original photographs, text translations and commentary. The volumes are published in Chicago and then distributed worldwide. One of their goals now is to make the information more accessible.

“What we’re eventually going to create here is three-dimensional scans of the monuments, which will allow virtual walk-throughs. Eventually, you’ll be able to access all of this online,” explains Johnson. He adds that while there is an increasing amount of published material about Egypt’s antiquities available on the internet, it is still a tiny fraction of what’s out there, meaning Chicago House will be at work for decades to come. et