Category: Ann - Part 21

NC2, or The Lost Underworld That Never Got Lost

Plan of the rock-cut tomb NC2 dating to 1939 Andrew Collins’ book ‘Beneath the Pyramids’ in which he claims to have (re)discovered the Lost Underworld of the Pharaohs starts with the assumption that the cave complex was last explorered in 1817 by Henry Salt and sadly forgotton or ignored after this; only an obscure reference in Salt’s memories references to the ‘catacombs’, which might even be the mythical Hall of Records. Dr. Zahi Hawass – Secretary General of the SCA – did already issue a statement saying the tomb’s location is well known to the SCA (thus the opposite of ‘lost’) and that there is no underground cave complex at this site. Now more proof – dug up from the archives – that the undecorated rock-cut tomb was never lost is presented by Peter Manuelian, Director of the Giza Archives for Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Manuelian confirms that George Reisner used the tomb as a storage room during his excavations at Giza in the early 20th century: “Members of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition, directed by George Reisner, were indeed aware of the tomb in question during the first half of the 20th century. It lies about 160 meters north of Harvard Camp, as the Expeditions dig house was then called.” He adds: “In fact, Reisner designated NC2 (North Cliff 2) as the air raid shelter for his Egyptian workmen during World War II.”

As good scholars do, the expedition lead by George Reisner produced plans of the tomb – the central one of three rock-cut structures in the cliff – which are now kept in the archives of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and will eventually become available on the Giza Archives Project website.

Because of the recent discussions concerning ~~the Lost Underworld~~ NC2 the museum has made an archaeological drawing by Expedition draftsman Alexander Floroff available online. It shows the faade on NC2, the pillared chamber behind, and the long corridor extending further to the south available. Again: see, not lost!

Peter Manuelian also offers us a new clue as to the possible original date of this rock-cut tomb. A pencil note by Egyptologist William Stevenson Smith added to the inked version of the above plan reads: “Rock cut tombs due north of Harvard Camp. Used as air raid shelters during War. In 1930 I saw traces of painting on columns in central one. Had the idea that this was an 18th Dyn. tomb or N.K. WSS 1946”.

More images of NC2 and the handwritten note by William Stevenson Smith you can find at the Giza Archives Blog. I can only agree with Peter Manuelian when he stresses that old plans and notes such as these indicate how valuable archaeological archives can be in reconstructing the history of the Giza Plateau.

Miniature Portrait of Alexander the Great Engraved in a Gemstone Discovered at Tel Dor

A binocular image of the miniature portrait engraved in the gemstone found at Tel Dor, Israel About 30 kilometres directly south of Haifa, Israel, lies a very large tel (an earth mound containing ancient architectural and artefact remains) that tells a story crossing at least eight civilizations. It is there – at Tel Dor – that a rare and surprising archaeological discovery has been made:an engraved gemstone carrying a portrait of Alexander the Great was uncovered at an excavation area in the southwestern part of Tel Dor. It is surprising that a work of art such as this would be found in Israel, on the periphery of the Hellenistic world. It is generally assumed that the master artists – such as the one who engraved the image of Alexander on this particular gemstone – were mainly employed by the leading Hellenistic courts in the capital cities, such as those in Alexandria in Egypt and Seleucia in Syria. This new discovery is evidence that local elites in secondary centers, such as Tel Dor, appreciated superior objects of art and could afford ownership of such items.

“Despite its miniature dimensions – the stone is less than a centimetre high and its width is less than half a centimetre – the engraver was able to depict the bust of Alexander on the gem without omitting any of the ruler’s characteristics” notes Dr. Gilboa, Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. “The emperor is portrayed as young and forceful, with a strong chin, straight nose and long curly hair held in place by a diadem.”

The significance of the discovery at Dor is in the gemstone being uncovered in an orderly excavation, in a proper context of the Hellenistic period. The origins of most Alexander portraits, scattered across numerous museums around the world, are unknown. Some belonged to collections that existed even prior to the advent of scientific archaeology, others were acquired on the black market, and it is likely that some are even forgeries.

The Macedonian commander was probably the first Greek to commission artists to depict his image – as part of a personality cult that was transformed into a propaganda tool. Rulers and dictators have implemented this form of propaganda ever since. The artists cleverly combined realistic elements of the ruler’s image along with the classical ideal of beauty as determined by Hellenistic art, royal attributes such as the diadem, and divine elements originating in Hellenistic and Eastern art. These attributes legitimized Alexander’s kingship in the eyes of his subjects in all the domains he conquered.

Aerial View of the Tel Dor Excavations These portraits were then distributed throughout the empire, featured on statues and mosaics in public places and were engraved on small items such as coins and seals. The image of Alexander remained a popular motif in the generations that followed his death. The conqueror’s youthful image became a symbol of masculinity, heroism and divine kingship. Later Hellenist rulers adopted these characteristics and commissioned self-portraits in the image of Alexander.

Dor was a major port city on the Mediterranean shore from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 BC) until the establishment of Caesarea during the Roman period. Alexander the Great passed through Dor in 332 BC, following the occupation of Tyre and on his way to Egypt. It seems that the city submitted to Alexander without resistance. Dor then remained a center of Hellenization in the land of Israel until it was conquered by Alexander Janneus, Hasmonean king of Judah in 100 BC. Finally, in the thirteenth century, a Crusader castle was built on the site. Few sites of the ancient world can boast a settlement history more varied and complex than this.

Standing with Stones, the Video – Stanton Drew

Stanton Drew Reconstruction - Still from Standing with Stones There are nearly 1,000 prehistoric stone circles in Britain and Rupert Soskin – together with producer Michael Bott – has visited over 100 of them, making an astonishing documentary about these magnificent Neolithic and Bronze monuments, focussing on a lot of the lesser known prehistoric stone monuments from megalithic Britain. Barrows, henges, borrows, cists, thrilitons and solitary megaliths, Soskin covers them all. ‘Standing with Stones’ wants to take the viewer beyond Stonehenge – that all-too familiar icon of Stone Age Britain – on an incredible journey of discovery that reveals the true wealth and extent of Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain & Ireland.

For the full 136 minutes (+ extras, of course) megalithic experience you should buy the DVD(or the book), but Michael Bott also made quite a bit of excerpts available for viewing on the website standingstones.tv and YouTube. I must admit though that, despite the many fascinating stories Rupert Soskin tells about ancient sites previously unknown to me, my favourite part of the film is a reconstruction of one of the ‘giants’, Stanton Drew in Somerset, and Soskin’s theory about it.

Standing With Stones – Was Stanton Drew a giant arena for hunting games?

With a diameter of over 112m, Stanton Drew is the second largest stone circle in Britain after Avesbury. It probably consisted of 30 stones, of which 27 still surive today. And if that was not yet impressive enough, a geophysical survey by English Heritage in 1997 revealed that the stone circle was surrounded by a ditch (7m wide), a raised bank and a 40m wide entrance, as well as 9 concentric rings of postholes within the stone circle. As each post was a meter apart and a meter or more across, this means over 400 wooden posts must have at one time been raised inside the monument.

Now why was this artificial forest created? Rupert Soskin suggests that Stanton Drew might have been a ‘hunting arena’, where spectators seated on the bank watched different communities competing and showing off their hunting skills. Blood sports?! Soskin defends his theory by pointing out that as at that time, the most of Britain was covered in forest and the most skilled hunter would have been held in high esteem, possibly even beyond his own community. The deep ditch would have stepped animals from escaping into the rowd while the forest of posts would create an enclosed but nevertheless real hunting ground. Yet, Soskin adds: “But then again, this amount of huge posts could easily have supported a flood, exactly the same design concept as for the Great Colosseum in Rome but preceding it by thousand of years. One can only wonder.”

And wonder, that’s exactly what Rupert Soskin’s theory made me do, even if a neolithic version of the Olympic hunting games might not be the most likely answer. Why would a group of people spend that much effort on a location to play games? Err…. 2012 you say? Well, never mind that question. 😉

Brooklyn Museum’s Lisa Bruno on Animal Mummy Research

The Brooklyn Museum holds 7 human and over 60 animal mummies in their collection. We know already quite a lot about their human mummies, but now Lisa Bruno tells us more about the animal mummy research project at the Museum in an informal presentation for the Museum’s ‘1stfans’. The Brooklyn Museum’s conservator Lisa Bruno talks about what an object conservator exactly is (and how to become one), the travelling exhibition ‘To Live Forever’ which is coming to the Brooklyn Museum February 2010 and the research the Getty Institute did on the ‘red mummy’ Demetrios – once thought to be a female.

And that’s not all, in her presentation Lisa Bruno also gives an insight in the extensive research on animal mummies: humanoid mummies containing ~~both ibis and cat bones~~ ibis bones*, crocodile mummies, fake animal mummies, resins used in mummification, blunt trauma on cats and poisoned crocodiles, economics of animal mummification, metal animal coffins and even a snake mummy!

Not all animal mummies consist of a whole animal, and it’s quite well possible this was a question of economics. There were many ways to make an animal mummy, but the most traditional way follows the way human mummies – don’t try this at home – are created:

Make an incision, take out the internal organs.
Dry the mummy using natron salt (sodium carbonate).
Seal and preserve the tissue with resinous materials like tree sap, waxes or coal tar.
Wrap in linen bandages.

Why did the Egyptians make animal mummies? Common thought by the public is that they were cherished pets, or grave gifs that could be useful in the afterlife. But that would not explain why hundreds and hundreds of animal mummies were found in Egypt, and some are actually in dedicated cemeteries. So might the cat mummies have served a more spiritual purpose? Likely, if you see that the mummy of a snake-killing egyptian mangoes was associated with a goddess of protection, and at some point animal mummies were even obligatory to honour the rulers of ancient Egypt.

Animal Mummy CSI: Conservator Lisa Bruno
talks about the animal mummy research project
at the Brooklyn Museum

As more institutions begin to study their collections of ancient animal mummies, there seems to only be more questions as to what these differences in mummification styles and animal species might actually mean.

In the months that have followed this presentation, the Brooklyn Museum’s conservation lab has continued to examine and x-ray the collection of animal mummies. They have enlisted the help of a radiologist at The Animal Medical Center Dr. Anthony Fischetti. Recently Anthony and a colleague visited the museum specifically to look at the x-radiographs of the cat mummies. In examining the radiographs, the veterinarians were able to confirm that the animals in the x-rays were in fact cats, and were able to give information regarding possible age. Depending on the size and shape of the skull and teeth, they were sometimes able to suggest whether the mummified cat was more likely a species of domesticated cat (Felis silvestris) or a wild species (Felis chaus).

The Brooklyn Museum also donated two long bones from their cat mummies to the ‘feline genome project’ run by Dr. Leslie Lyons for the University of California. The project is looking into what ancient DNA can tell us about current domestic cat populations. We’re curious, especially as people despite extensive research still not agree when the first ‘wolf’ was turned ‘dog’.

Giza Cave Complex aka ‘The Lost Underworld of the Pharaohs’ is Just a Rock Cut Tomb

Location of the rock cut tomb slash underworld in Giza Andrew Collins promised the world that soon he’ll unravel Egypt’s best kept secret in ‘Beneath the Pyramids: Egypt’s Greatest Secret Uncovered’, but it seems that Dr. Zahi Hawass has beaten Collins to this, stating that the so-called cave-complex is nothing but a rock cut tomb, already thoroughly explored and examined.

Dr. Hawass says in a statement on his website: “This story shows how people who do not have a background in archaeology use the media and the Internet to make headlines.Unfortunately, when people make statements without knowing the history of the subject, they may mislead the public.For example, if a person did not know the history of the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza, they might say that it came from a lost civilization, but scholars of Egypt have disproved that.When I saw this Internet story about a new discovery at Giza, I knew it was misleading.The article reports that a huge system of tunnels and caves has been found; however, I can say that there is no underground cave complex at this site.”

We know everything about this site as it currently stands, though new discoveries may come about through continued scientific excavation.

The statement stresses that the Giza plateau is one of the most well studied sites in Egypt; it has been explored, mapped and recorded by many archaeologists, including Dr. Hawass: “We know everything about this site as it currently stands, though new discoveries may come about through continued scientific excavation.” And it’s obvious that Dr. Zahi does not think of Collins’ research as scientific.

The rock-cut tomb that Collins claims to be ‘The Lost Underworld of the Pharaos’ was discovered an opened in 1816 by Henry Salt and Giovanni Caviglia. When they explored it, they called it a catacomb because it contains some tunnels and corridors cut deep into the rock. Years later, Howard Vyse and John Shae Perring came toexamine the rock cut tomb.It has also recently been re-explored by the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The tomb is also known to have been used as a storeroom by George Reisner during his excavations at Giza in the early 20th century.

The first hall of the tomb during the recent SCA excavations The ‘catacombs’ are about 3.2 meters high and the entrance leads south into the front hall, shaped like an inverted T.From there two halls are visible, one to the right and one to the left.The left leads to a big room cut into the rock, about 6 meters long, which contained Latin inscriptions on the ceiling, showing that this tomb has been opened throughout the ages.To the right there is another square hole cut into the rock, which leads to a descending passage filled with sand, and contains pottery sherds, bones and other artifacts.There are other passageways cut into the rock from the main corridors, but these are short tunnels. (Find the ‘Entrance to the Lost Underworld’ on Google Maps or Google Earth.)

One must admit that this sounds a less fascinating than Collins’ report on his exploration of the ‘cave complex’: “We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders.” Recent video material of the ‘catacombs’ released by Collins does not even contain any of the above-mentioned horrors, which could make the footage at least a bit more intertaining, so it seems Dr. Hawass is right when stating Collins is just trying to get into the headlines. And here Collins has a problem, as Dr Zahi is just as good – or probably even better – at being the center of media attention.

“My academic opinion, based on the official report, is that this is likely a catacomb cut during the Graeco-Roman Period that was used for the burial of sacred animals, similar to the catacombs at Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel,” says Dr Hawass. He continues: “These burials of sacred animals are well known in Egyptological literature, and were made for the purpose of offering to the gods, they have nothing to do with the idea of a lost civilization or other unscientific ideas that people come up with and circulate on the Internet.”

The conclusion: ‘Beneath the Pyramids: Egypt’s Greatest Secret Uncovered‘ might be a good horror book – especially for egyptologists who dig ‘scientifically correct’ – and although your inner pyramidiot might enjoy it, don’t expect any great mysteries revealed?

Lord Byron, Poetry on the Elgin Marbles

Lord Byron has been described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, but there is an other reason – besides his regular escapades – why the British may have deemed this famous poet to be ‘wicked’. Byron was a bitter opponent of Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon marbles from Greece, and “reacted with fury” when Elgin’s agent gave him a tour of the Parthenon, during which he saw the missing friezes and metopes. He penned a poem, the Curse of Minerva, to denounce Elgin’s actions. Although Byron never intended to publish this poem, a copy was stolen from him and printed without his approval.

“Mortal!” -twas thus she spake- “that blush of shame
Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honourd less by all, and least by me;
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seekst thou the cause of loathing? -look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive tyrannies expire.
Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain:
These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adornd,
That Adrian reard when drooping Science mournd.
What more I owe let gratitude attest-
Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.
That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:

Fragment from ‘The Curse of Minerva’ by Lord Byron, 1811

George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron took up the subject of the Parthenon Frieze again a year later, in the lengthy narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. Canto XIto XV of ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ are a weeping tribute to the Parthenon Marbles:

Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers oer the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behovd
To guard those relics neer to be restored.
Curst be the hour when their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatchd thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorrd!

Canto XVfrom ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ by Lord Byron, 1812

Already in the early 19th century, the ‘destruction of the Parthenon’ due to the removal of the friezes did not make sense to Lord Byron, permission slip or no permission slip. Maybe the British Museum can counter this with Keats? 😉

Ventotene’s Graveyard of Roman Ships

A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a graveyard of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene. The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 meters underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years.

Part of an archipelago situated halfway between Rome and Naples on Italys west coast, Ventotene historically served as a place of shelter during rough weather in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The ships appear to have been heading for safe anchorage, but they never made it, said Timmy Gambin, head of archaeology for the Aurora Trust. So in a relatively small area we have five wrecks… a graveyard of ships.

The vessels – all ancient shipwrecks dating back to various phases of the Roman period – were transporting wine from Italy, prized fish sauce from Spain and north Africa, and a mysterious cargo of metal ingots from Italy, possibly to be used in the construction of statues or weaponry. From the project report:

Underwater video from one of the shipwrecks
found at Ventotene:

Carabinieri diver holding up a mortar:

The area surrounding Ventotene surveyed
by the Aurora Trust:

All photographs and video by the Aurora Trust.
You can find more amazing images on their Flickr stream.

A very well preserved shipwreck with cargo of mixed Spanish amphorae from Baetica carrying garum (Roman fish sauce) measuring approximately 15 metres long by 5 metres wide. The height of the amphorae, many if which are still stacked in their original position, is of just over two metres.
A very well preserved shipwreck with cargo of Italian wine amphorae (from Campania) measuring approximately 18 metres long and 5 metres wide. The height of the amphorae, many if which are still stacked in their original position, is of just over two metres.
Shipwreck with mixed cargo of mortaria (mortars) and Italian wine amphorae (from Campania) measuring approximately 13 metres long and 4 metres wide. The height of the mortaria pile is approximately one metre. Some amphorae can be observed emerging from under the pile of mortaria. Although divided into two this site is very well preserved.
Shipwreck with mixed cargo of Italian wine amphorae, glass frit, metal bars and as yet unidentified cylindrical objects. This site measures approximately 20 metres long and 5 metres wide and is relatively flat (not more that 50 cm off the seabed). Although not as complete as the first three sites the objects from this shipwreck are relatively well preserved.

The underwater archaeologists then used the ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) video data to select three of the five sites for deep sea operations aimed at obtaining high resolution video images. Top Italian underwater photographer, Roberto Rinaldi, worked with the AURORA Trust and the Ministero dei beni Culturali and was assisted by dive expert Marco Donato.

In order to better understand the discovered sites it was decided to recover a sample of objects from two of the shipwrecks. In a delicate, well-planned operation supported by a fantastic team of Carabinieri divers, four mortaria were recovered from site 3 and one amphora from site 1. These were transferred to the museum of Ventotene where they will be desalinated, restored and eventually displayed.

The Trust is planning to return to Ventotene in the summer of 2010. It is envisaged that a sub bottom profiler will be deployed over the 5 shipwrecks so as to determine the extent of the site buried in under the sediment. Furthermore, the ROV will be deployed to carry out more photographic recording of the sites and if deemed necessary samples of objects from other sites will be recovered.

In Bija’s earlier blogpost ‘Roman Shipwrecks and Berlusconi Found in Deep Water‘, she quotes Annalisa Zarattini from the Italian Culture Ministry saying that this underwater discovery is part of a wider plan to locate and examine sunken treasures and artefacts before looters can get to them. New sophisticated technology means that underwater probing is increasingly within the reach of private organisations, who may not hand their finds over to the Italian state. Zarattini adds: It’s important that we arrive there first.

Digital Digging – Virtual Reconstructions of Avebury’s Sanctuary and the Durrington Walls using Google Earth

Aerial View of Woodhenge Reconstruction - Google Earth .kmz file by Digital Digging Digital Digging – run by Henry Rothwell – is a resource for anyone with an interest in archaeology, history, cartography and … digital reconstructions! Digital Digging’s ‘Model Room’ is where they store their virtual reconstructions, created especially for you to explore yourself using Google Earth. It holds a selection of the timber and stone circles of Wessex and Somerset, including Durrington Walls South Circle, Woodhenge, Stanton Drew and the Sanctuary at Avebury. You can look at the image page of each reconstruction or download the associated .kmz file and download the model into Google Earth, where you can get inside it, and look at it from any angle you choose.

There is something fascinating about Digital Digging’s Google Earth-based reconstructions, besides the fact that you can ‘fly’ through them: they are overlayed on satellite images of how the historical sites look nowadays, so you can see wooden posts stick out of concrete roads, cars included. The benefit of having a 3Dmodel finished, is that you can easily create videos out of it, and this is exactly what Henry Rothwell has done:

The Sanctuary at Avebury

The Sanctuary Timber and Stone Circle at Avebury is a prehistoric site on Overton Hill located around 5 miles west of Marlborough in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of a wider Neolithic landscape which includes the nearby sites of Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Avebury, to which The Sanctuary was linked by the 25m wide and 2.5km long Kennet Avenue. It also lies close to the route of the prehistoric Ridgeway and near several Bronze Age barrows.

The Durrington Walls Timber Circles

Durrington Walls is the site of a Neolithic village and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. It is 2 miles north east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury. At 500m in diameter it is the largest henge in Britain, and recent evidence suggests that it was a complementary monument to Stonehenge. What visibly remains of Durrington Walls today is the walls of the henge monument in fact the eroded remains of the inner slope of the bank and the outer slope of the internal ditch.

Digital Digging’s model room is full of timber circles at the moment. There is a reconstruction of Stanton Drew, another of the ‘cricket stumps’ in the Stonehenge car park, one of Woodhenge and the Durrington Walls and the Avebury Sanctuary shown above. If you wish to ‘explore’ these ancient monuments for yourself, can you do so by loading the .kmz files Digital Digging provides into Google Earth. Give it a try, it’s not as scary as it sounds (and instructions are provided)! 😉

And most of all, keep an eye on Digital Digging, as there are more virtual models upcoming: “Reconstructions are the next big project, and although the two sites so far included consist of posts (not massively taxing when all is said and done), I will shortly be trotting off into the Roman Period, and, all going well, putting up the odd Saxon hall or two a few hundred years later.” We’re looking forward to those! (Whilst in the mean while keeping ourselves content with Ancient Rome 3D, Virtual Karnak and of course our very own King Tut Virtual.)

Opensourcing Photography: The Frankencamera DSLR

Frankencamera Opensource Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an open-source digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer. Virtually all the features of the Stanford camera focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc. are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere. The premise of the project is to build a camera that is open source, said computer science professor Marc Levoy.

You could say that this has nothing to do with Ancient Worlds, but it is rather the opposite:photography is one of the most important tools currently used in archaeology to capture, store and share information about heritage sites and artefacts. Would it not be amazing if you do not have to rely on your computer back in the office to post-process your photographs? Imagine uploading your photographs directly from your camera to a server in a safe location (or Flickr)?

Bye, bye old fashioned grey-cards:custom settings for photographing in location X that could be shared between colleagues, making sure all use the same whitebalances. Add to that cataloguing data beyond normal EXIFinformation added on the spot, a camera that disables it’s flash automatically as it knows through GPSinformation its owner has taken it into a museum and stitching photographs together without having to fire up Panotools or Photoshop. Oh, and by the time you get home, you camera went through the museum’s photography database, and – using an image recognition process – tagged and titled the snapshots you took. No more having to wonder ‘now which Ptolemei was this again?’

Version 2.0 of the Frankencamera, the experimental open-source camera platform, runs Linux, and its metering, focusing, demosaicing, denoising, white balancing, and other post-processing algorithms are programmable. The current version takes standard Canon EOS lenses.

An open-source digital single-lens reflex camera would mean DSLR + GIMP + Google Android minus phone. Although, come to think of it, most DSLRcameras nowadays come equipped with speakers and a microphone, so let’s even keep the mobile phone possibility. You could even install a few games on your camera to kill the time until that perfect sunset comes along!

Computer science graduate student Andrew Adams, who helped design the prototype of the Stanford camera (dubbed Frankencamera) imagines a future where consumers download applications to their open-platform cameras the way Apple apps are downloaded to iPhones today. When the cameras operating software is made available publicly, perhaps a year from now, users will be able to continuously improve it, along the open-source model of the Linux operating system for computers or the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

From there, the skys the limit. Programmers will have the freedom to experiment with new ways of tuning the cameras response to light and motion, adding their own algorithms to process the raw images in innovative ways.Levoys plan is to develop and manufacture the Frankencamera as a platform that will first be available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography researchers. In the young field of computational photography, which Levoy helped establish, researchers use optics benches, imaging chips, computers and software to develop techniques and algorithms to enhance and extend photography. This work, however, is bound to the lab. Frankencamera would give researchers the means to take their experiments into the studios, the landscapes, and the stadiums. On the ‘under development’ list:

Among the most mature ideas in the field of computational photography is the idea of extending a cameras dynamic range, or its ability to handle a wide range of lighting in a single frame. The process of high-dynamic-range imaging is to capture pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then to combine them into a composite image in which every pixel is optimally lit. Until now, this trick could be done only with images in computers. Levoy wants cameras to do this right at the scene, on demand. Although the algorithms are very well understood, no commercial cameras do this today. But Frankencamera does.
Another algorithm that researchers have achieved in the lab, but no commercial camera allows, is enhancing the resolution of videos with high-resolution still photographs. While a camera is gathering low-resolution video at 30 frames a second, it could also periodically take a high-resolution still image. The extra information in the still could then be recombined by an algorithm into each video frame. Levoy and his students plan to implement that on Frankencamera, too.
Sometimes you like to be able to adjust the focus after to take the picture, after you take the picture, rather than having a photograph in which just one thing is in focus, or everything is on focus. If you place a micro-lens array into the camera, the Frankencamera allows you to refocus – change the focus – after you take the picture.
Yet another idea is to have the camera communicate with computers on a network, such as a photo-hosting service on the Web. Imagine, Levoy says, if the camera could analyse highly-rated pictures of a subject in an online gallery before snapping the shutter for another portrait of the same subject. The camera could then offer advice (or just automatically decide) on the settings that will best replicate the same skin tone or shading. By communicating with the network, the camera could avoid taking a ghastly picture.

VIDEO: Stanford Photo Scientists are Teaching Camera New Tricks

“We are therefore building an open-source camera platform that runs Linux, is fully programmable (including its digital signal processor) and connected to the Internet, and accommodates SLR lenses and SLR-quality sensors.”

Of course users with Frankencameras would not be constrained by what is already known. Theyd be free to discover and experiment with all kinds of other operations that might yield innovative results because theyd have total control.

“Some cameras have software development kits that let you hook up a camera with a USB cable and tell it to set the exposure to this, the shutter speed to that, and take a picture, but thats not what were talking about,” says Levoy. “What were talking about is, tell it what to do on the next microsecond in a metering algorithm or an autofocusing algorithm, or fire the flash, focus a little differently and then fire the flash again things you cant program a commercial camera to do.”

Within about a year, after the camera is developed – tech details in the press release – to his satisfaction, Levoy hopes to have to have the funding and the arrangements in place for an outside manufacturer to produce them in quantity, ideally for less than $1,000. Levoy would then provide them at cost to colleagues and their students at other universities.

As many ideas as Levoys team may want to implement on the camera, the real goal is to enable the broader community of photography researchers and enthusiasts to contribute ideas the Stanford group has not imagined. The success of Camera 2.0 will be measured by how many new capabilities the community can add to collective understanding of whats possible in photography.

All aboard! Ancient Egyptian Ship Sails for the Legendary Land of Punt

Ancient Egyptians may be best known for building pyramids, but internationally renowned maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward wants the world to know that they were pretty good sailors, too. Ward and an international team of archaeologists, shipwrights and sailors recently built a full-scale replica of a 3,800-year-old ship and sailed it on the Red Sea to re-create the voyage Egyptian female pharaoh Hatshepsut took to a place the ancient Egyptians called God’s Land, or Punt.

A 2006 discovery of the oldest remains of seafaring ships in the world in manmade caves at Wadi Gawasis, on the edge of the Egyptian desert was at the start of this modern-day adventure. The Egyptians used this site to assemble and disassemble ships built of cedar planks and to store the planks, stone anchors and coils of rope until the next expedition – one that obviously never came. The wooden planks found in the caves were determined nearly 4,000 years old. Based on the shipworms that had tunneled into the planks, Cheryl Ward hypothesized that the ships had weathered a long voyage of up to six months, likely to the fabled southern Red Sea trading center of Punt. Civil unrest and political instability after the Middle Kingdom period likely put a halt to further exploration, and the caves were long forgotten.

FSU Headlines:
Maritime Archaeologist at Helm of Modern Journey
to Ancient Egyptian Land

Florida State University associate professor of anthropology Cheryl Ward discusses her role in the design, construction and voyage of an ancient Egyptian seafaring vessel.

Scholars had long known that Egyptians travelled to Punt, but they debated its exact location and whether the Egyptians reached Punt by land or by sea. Some had thought the ancient Egyptians did not have the naval technology to travel long distances by sea, but the findings at Wadi Gawasis confirmed that Egyptians sailed a 2,000-mile round trip voyage to Punt, located in what is today Ethiopia or Yemen, Ward said.

By October 2008, the 66-foot-long by 16-foot-wide ship, which Ward dubbed the Min of the Desert, was completed using the techniques of the ancient Egyptians. This means no frames, no nails and planks that were designed to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. The Ancient Egyptians would have carried the ship piece by piece across the desert, but the ‘Min of the Desert’ was for convenience reasons allowed to travel by truck.

In late December, the Min of the Desert set sail but political limitations as well as an abundance of modern-day pirates along the southern end of the route kept the crew from leaving Egyptian waters, and the voyage ended after seven days and about 150 miles into what would have been a 1,000-mile trip to Punt.

But still, the crew was surprised at how fast the ship was able to travel: it sailed 150 miles in just 7 days at approximately 6 knots. “The ship’s speed means that journeys would be made in much less time than Egyptologists had calculated, making the whole voyage simpler and more feasible for the ancients,” she said, adding that it probably took about a month to sail to Punt and two months to return. “The technology we used had not been applied to shipbuilding for more than 3,500 years, and it still works as well today as it did then.”

“This project has demonstrated the extraordinary capability of the Egyptians at sea,” Ward said. “Many people, including my fellow archaeologists, think of the Egyptians as tied to the Nile River and lacking in the ability to go to sea. For 25 years, my research has been dedicated to showing the scope of their ability and now, to proving their independently invented approach to ship construction worked magnificently at sea.”

The Press Release on the Florida State University website.
Or read Cheryl Ward’s description of this adventure, illustrated with tons of photographs.