Related papers: Abusir: from Pliny the Elder to Google Maps
It is known since the 19 century that in the layout of the pyramid field of the pharaohs of the 4 th Egyptian dynasty at Giza, a main axis exists. Indeed, the south-east corners of these monuments align towards the site of the temple of…
A recent announcement of some pyramids, buried under the sand of Egypt and discovered by means of infrared remote sensing, renewed the interest on the archaeological surveys aided by satellites. Here we propose the use of images, obtained…
We propose the use of image processing to enhance the Google Maps of some archaeological areas of Egypt. In particular we analyse that place which is considered the cradle of pyramids, where it was announced the discovery of a new pyramid…
Everybody knows how much synoptic maps are useful today. An excellent example above all is Google Earth: its simplicity and friendly interface allows every user to have the Earth maps ready in just one simple layout; nevertheless a crucial…
The Great Bend of the river Nile contains the Bayuda region with its volcanic core. Along the river, a fertile strip of land has attracting human settlement for thousands of years and is then rich of archaeological sites. The distribution…
The discovery of the Diary of Merer (papyri Wadi al-Jarf) allows us to see the Egyptian calendar applied in a logbook. The diary is dated to the 26th year of reign of Khufu and describes Merer and his crew transporting the limestone blocks…
The architectural complexes composed by the two main pyramids of Giza together with their temples are investigated from an inter-disciplinary point of view, taking into account their astronomical alignments as well as their relationships…
Conceptual landscapes in Egypt show a remarkable continuity - for as long as 2000 years - in the use of symbols and in the interplay between natural and man-built features. Directionality, both in the sense of succession of elements and of…
Our landscape has been shaped by man throughout the millennia. It still contains many clues to how it was used in the past giving us insights into ancient cultures and their everyday life. Our summer school uses archaeology and astronomy as…
The Arabia Shield has a volcanic nature inside. A region of the Western Saudi Arabia is in fact covered with vast fields of lava known as harraat. These lands are spotted by many stone circles and other quite interesting archaeological…
For many decades scholars converse how to correctly include the Old Babylonian Empire into the absolute timeline of history. A cuneiform text from the series Enuma Anu Enlil (EAE #20) reports on the destruction of Babylon after a lunar and…
In the eighth century BC something peculiar seems to happen on Sicily. The archaeological record starts to show the arrival of Greek material culture. By the fifth century BC the island is effectively 'Hellenised' and ancient historians…
To give a georeference means to give a reference as existing in the physical space of Earth. This procedure is widely used for the location of archaeological, historical and other sites when geographic information systems (GIS) are used.…
Modern excavations yielded a distribution of the house areas in the ancient Egyptian city Akhetaten, which was populated for a short period during the 14th century BC. Assuming that the house area is a measure of the wealth of its…
We introduce a computational method of dating for an archive in ancient Mesopotamia. We use the name index Nuzi Personal Names (NPN) published in 1943. We made an electronic version of NPN and added the kinships of the two powerful families…
In recent years, different scientific disciplines, from Physics to Egyptology, from Geology to Archaeoastronomy, evidenced a series of clues pointing to the possibility that the original project of the pyramid complex of Khufu at Giza…
We present work in jointly inferring the unique individuals as well as their social rank within a collection of letters from an Old Assyrian trade colony in K\"ultepe, Turkey, settled by merchants from the ancient city of Assur for…
An equation, fundamental for solar energy applications, can be used to determine the sunrise amplitude at given latitude. It is therefore suitable for being applied to archaeoastronomical calculations concerning the orientation of towns,…
The study of the mathematics and geometry of ancient civilizations is a task which seems to be very difficult or even impossible to fulfil, if few written documents, or none at all, had survived from the past. However, besides the direct…
A database of objects discovered in houses in the Roman city of Pompeii provides a unique view of ordinary life in an ancient city. Experts have used this collection to study the structure of Roman households, exploring the distribution and…