This tutorial is meant as preparation for a class on Digital Epigraphy I am giving this week and the next. It will explain the basics of vector drawing in Adobe Illustrator. Other tutorials will follow on vector drawing in Inkscape (free! open source!), digital penciling and inking in Photoshop and photogrammetry. Please note that I…
Ancient Egypt in 19th century poetry
Every Egyptologist is probably familiar with the sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer…
Archaeogaming and Egyptology
Digital Egyptology news can now be followed at my website https://digitalegyptology.org/ Good news: researching video games in the context of archaeology is a thing now! It’s called ‘archaeogaming’ and covers everything from the digging up of actual video games (think of the Atari video game burial) to the digitally ‘excavating’ of code inside an old…
New adventures in Luxor
In February of this year I again visited Luxor with a small company. This time especially to try the Luxor Pass and to visit the tombs of Seti I and Nefertari. After an hour’s delay due to snowfall in Amsterdam, extensive security checks at the various airports and a rather awful flight on a cramped…
Mrs. Naunakhte
AUC Press 2016 264 pp. Hardbound $34.95 ISBN 9789774167737 Stand-up Egyptologist Koenraad Donker van Heel is at it again with a third popular book about business-minded ancient Egyptians. This time he chooses to resurrect a woman called Naunakhte who lived in the artist community of Deir el-Medina around 1150 BCE. Her village was home to…
The Story of Egypt
Joann Fletcher’s story of Egypt is a personal one. And she is a good storyteller. She writes expressively, making you hear the primordial Nile waters flooding and the evening fires in the desert crackling. Her story is inevitably a history of ancient Egypt, divided in the all too well-known kingdoms and dynasties, substituted by alliterative chapter names…
Travels in Cairo and Luxor
Ever since visiting Egypt in February of this year, I’ve been meaning to write a travel blog. Together with Marein Meijer, who works at the National Museum of Antiquities (check out the awesome exhibition she made), I spent a couple of days in Cairo and over a week in Luxor. In light of the recent troubles in Egypt, I thought…
Bread and beer for Hetepherakhet
The offering chapel of Hetepherakhet, now housed in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, was once part of a mastaba tomb in the Old Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara. The chapel was excavated hurriedly by the famous archaeologist Auguste Mariette in the 1860’s. At that time, Mariette fanned around Egypt like an archaeological sandstorm, undertaking…