Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures marks 100 years of documenting Egypt’s ancient inscriptions

“​​The walls of those monuments are covered with incredibly important economic, religious and historical documents. These are real records of what was going on in Egypt 3,000 years ago,” said Egyptologist Emily Teeter, co-curator of ISAC’s current special exhibition “Chicago on the Nile: 100 years of the Epigraphic Survey in Egypt.” “But the problem is that these records are rapidly perishing through 3,000-years-plus of erosion, groundwater, vandalism and the pressures of tourism.”

Increasingly, the Epigraphic Survey’s mission has expanded to include not just documentation, but also conservation, training and site management to preserve Egypt’s ancient history before it disappears forever.

The Chicago House Method

The modern city of Luxor, known in the ancient world as Thebes, has one of the largest concentrations of ancient monuments in Egypt. This includes the site of Medinet Habu, a massive walled temple complex mainly built by pharaoh Ramesses III over 3,000 years ago.

When Breasted first visited Egypt in the early 20th century, he saw the potential of a new, developing technology to record the vast number of hieroglyphs and decorative reliefs: photography. However, Breasted quickly realized the camera’s limitations.

“When you take a photograph of the wall surface, it sees everything,” said J. Brett McClain, field director of the Epigraphic Survey, who first joined the Survey as a graduate student in 1998. “It sees the details that you want to see, but it also sees a lot of information that you may not want to see.”

Photos show damage, discoloration, and encrustation, making images harder for scholars to interpret. In response, Breasted came up with a new technique—one that combines photography with illustration.

This technique, known as the Chicago House Method, begins with an enlarged photo of a wall section. An artist, trained in scientific illustration, then traces the photographic print with pencil while looking at the original wall. Back in the studio, the lines are redrawn with ink. Then the photograph is bleached away to leave behind a perfect illustrated replica. To maintain the highest level of accuracy, two Egyptologists independently review the drawing in a process known as collation.

“By combining the three skill sets of a variety of different people throughout the process, we create a record of the wall that is more accurate than any one person or any one technique by itself could create,” McClain said.

Today, digital tools augment Breasted’s large-format camera and the artist’s ink pen, but the underlying approach has remained virtually the same for a century. New technologies have also made it easier to make the Survey’s work accessible to all.

“Everything that we publish is simultaneously published in hardcopy, but also available as a free PDF. And this is really our way of making sure that our very important work is disseminated throughout the world,” Teeter said.

Preserving for the future

For the past several decades, environmental change has accelerated the threats to the ancient monuments at Luxor. As agricultural areas have expanded, salt from the rising groundwater level has eaten away at the stones.

“The soft stone that enabled them to carve these spectacular reliefs and monuments also is what makes them vulnerable to erosion and destruction over time,” said ISAC’s director, Prof. Timothy P. Harrison. “So, an increasingly active part of the Epigraphic Survey’s mission has been not just documentation, but also the actual conservation and preservation of these monuments.”

Since the 1990s, with the help of grant funding and in partnership with the Egyptian government, the Survey has cleaned, conserved and even rebuilt monuments.

For example, the team completely dismantled and rebuilt three ceremonial gates at Medinet Habu that were on the verge of collapse. Each large stone block was carefully removed by stoneworkers so it could receive conservation treatment. A new foundation was poured, and the stones were carefully put back in place.

Salt and erosion also continue to eat away at the inscriptions on these monuments—records of the past that will eventually be illegible. The mission of the Survey is to create documentation so precise that it can stand in place of the original texts.

“We may not be able to—this is sad to say—save the actual monument,” Teeter said. “But at least we'll be able to know what the Egyptians were telling us.”

For the past century, the Epigraphic Survey has documented thousands of inscriptions, but the work is far from complete; at least half of all known ancient Egyptian texts remain insufficiently documented and published. With the assistance of new technology like powerful databases and analytic tools, the survey’s vast data can be compiled together in new ways Harrison calls “a game changer.”

“We know that our records are going to preserve this information for the future,” McClain said. “And that is something incredibly motivating to be a part of.”