Projects

Naga

Since 2013, the Egyptian Museum has been leading an excavation project in Naga, northeast of Khartoum, the capital of the Republic of Sudan.

Naga is the southernmost city of the Kingdom of Meroë, the neighbor and powerful rival of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Located northeast of Khartoum, the capital of the Republic of Sudan, far from the Nile in the steppe, Naga has remained untouched since its heyday from 200 BC to 250 AD.

For more information, visit the Naga Project page.

Inscription project

In the long term, the inscription project provides for the scientific processing of all inscribed objects in the museum. The texts will be documented and made legible with the help of various methods. The first volume of the inscription project, which deals with nearly 70 inscribed statues of private individuals, kings and gods, is in the final editing stage.

One focus is on the object group of the Uschebtis, the so-called servant figurines, which performed work as substitute bodies for the deceased in the afterlife. All 382 figures were newly documented and edited.

As a third group of text carriers, the focus was on 30 ostraca (pottery and stone sherds) inscribed with Hieratic as well as vessel inscriptions. Detailed research of the contents and provenance of the ostraka revealed that they originated from the area of Thebes-West, today’s Luxor, in particular from the settlement of Deir el-Medineh, where the workers and craftsmen who were responsible for the construction of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived.

In order to make the texts on the objects, some of which are in poor condition, more legible, various methods were used last year. In addition to classical photography, multispectral images and high-resolution 3D scans were made of selected objects, which significantly improved readability. Faded inscriptions and drawings written in red and black ink could be improved many times over using DStretch software. Drawings and inscriptions on wooden objects were brought out with the help of infrared light. UV light and green lamps were also used. The latter make it possible to fluorescently visualize strongly faded color pigments of Egyptian blue. Finally, fragmentary statues were virtually reconstructed using 3D models.

Radjedef

The museum has about 40 fragments of several statues of King Radjedef (Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, c. 2580 BC). Other statue fragments are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale in Cairo, and at the Louvre in Paris. The project “The statue fragments of King Radjedef. Digital reconstruction and virtual presentation” specifically uses modern methods such as stiff-light scanning and virtual models to digitally capture, reconstruct where possible, and recontextualize an object inventory that is particularly valuable for Egyptology and art history and is distributed across various locations.

The project will be carried out in cooperation with the Archaeology Department of the University of Leuven and will result in a publication and – depending on the results – in a real or virtual exhibition.

Auf Sand liegen in einer Ausstellungsvitrine mehrere rotbraune Statuenfragmente des Radjedef.

Rekonstruiertes Fragment eines Königsnamens aus rötlichem Stein

Green Museum

As a responsible cultural institution, we feel particularly committed to environmental protection and consistently gear our actions to avoiding environmental pollution and conserving resources. To this end, we systematically introduce principles of ecological sustainability into our cultural operations and involve employees, business partners, other stakeholders and museum guests in this process.

We take measures to reduce greenhouse gases and the consumption of resources and use high-quality, environmentally friendly products, where possible regionally. We also reduce waste volumes through waste-avoiding procurement and sensible waste separation. We define our environmental targets, measure our progress and report on them both internally and to the public.

Report “Auf dem Weg zum grünen Museum”

Report “Stromeinsparung mit Nachtabschaltung”

Ein runder Sticker mit einem hellgrünen und einem darin gelagerten dunkelgrünen Kreis. Im inneren Kreis ein weißer Stromstecker, darunter steht: Wir machen mit! -20%

Scientific requests

Do you have a request within the framework of a scientific project or would you like to work on our originals?

Then please contact the secretary’s office in the museum administration: Tel. 089 – 289 27 630 or info@smaek.de