Researchers from the APAC Labs of STARC, The Cyprus Institue, travelled to Alexandria, Egypt, for the purposes of the Alexandrian Necropolis project, led by the Archaeological Society of Alexandria.
APAC Labs team is responsible for the digital documentation of the site utilizing advances in 2D and 3D imaging technologies as well as selected spectral and technical photography applications. Creating a detailed 3D model will provide the necessary documentation of the site’s current condition and state of preservation. Such detailed documentation is necessary to establish a detailed record of the monument, which will offer much-improved documentation from the 1900s—which was rather incomplete due to time limitations. The site’s digital documentation will also allow the identification of all alternations (natural and man-made) that have occurred at the site since its discovery, at least as captured by the 1900s plans. A crucial part of the procedure will be the selected tracing of the almost extinct painted decoration preserved in the pores of the rock-cut walls/ surfaces of the complex.
In other words, this will be the first-ever complete scientific documentation of the site, providing an invaluable record that will allow us to identify and document all threats the site has to confront in the present and in the near future. The importance of such a process has already been acknowledged by representatives of the Archaeological Service.
The digital documentation is also expected to be used in the production of visual media displayed in the new information center at the site and in the creation of a new booklet and a brochure. Furthermore, it will comprise the basis for a new up-to-date publication, which is planned after completing the site-management process.
Summary of the project
This project proposal aims to the comprehensive revisiting (site management and documentation) of the earliest surviving monumental funerary complex in Alexandria of Egypt, the so-called Hypogeum A in Shatby. Situated next to the present-day New Library of Alexandria, Hypogeum A dates back to the beginning of the Ptolemaic rule, only a few decades after the foundation of the City by Alexander the Great in April of 331 BC; in other words, it belongs to the generation that “built this Great City”. Having passed more than a century after its discovery and being mostly neglected in terms of the archaeological site and case study, this landmark demands immediate intervention, targeting not only its survival in the 21st century but also its dynamic return to Alexandria’s archaeological and further cultural map.
