Paper
1 August 1990 Application of computer-assisted photogrammetry in the documentation of excavations and care of monuments in Egypt
György Csáki
Author Affiliations +
Proceedings Volume 1395, Close-Range Photogrammetry Meets Machine Vision; 13953E (1990) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2294365
Event: Close-Range Photogrammetry Meets Machine Vision, 1990, Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
The surveyor or dmImentalist of ancient Egyptian monuments and excavations almost always meet the problem of registering the decorated walls and wall-fragments of Pharaonic buildings. This job has been usually done by direct copying of pictures and hieroglyphs onto transparent foil even today. This process is inaccurate, slow and it can only register relatively little information; in addition, it is a very time-consuming work.4 The use of photo9rammetry can basically improve this process: the spatial model of photographed surfaces can be viewed at any time, and you can also make accurate measurements on the photos. Thus, the actual state can be preserved and reconstructed even if the original is destroyed. A computerized documentation of originals can be made by a computer-assisted interactive graphical system based on digital models. This system provides more information than the traditional drawings made after pho- togrammetric interpretation. This documentation is detailed, accurate, and the draw- ings can be stored on magnetic data carriers. On the basis of stored data, the plots can be displayed at any scale and in colour according to their thematic content; var- ious metric data can be retrieved and drawn by a computer-controlled plotter. With the use of special graphical programmes the corresponding walls or figures on wall-frag- ments can be matched, certain elements /e.g. hieroglyphs/ can be defined, and the figures or writings on walls can be completed or reconstructed by using known repre- sentations and texts. By transforming the photogrammetric pictures, scale-true images can be produced, from which the wall representations can be mounted together. A Hungarian expedition of Ebtvos Lorand University /Budapest/, led by Professor Lasz- 16 Kakosy has been excavating tomb No. 32 in Thebes, Egypt since 1983. The author was a member of this expedition with scholarship between 11 January and 11 April, 1988, made photogrammetric pictures on the walls and wall-fragments of the tomb in order to ease their archaeological documentation. By November-December 1989 most part of the tomb was interpreted with the application of computer-assisted photogrammetric methods; in addition, the digital drawings of walls were also produced at scale 1: 5. These drawings were compared to the walls on the site in March 1990 with the collaboration of Egyptologists; the plots were cor- rected and completed accordingly. At present, the necessary improvement of the digi- tal map-making system has been going on at the Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing /IGCRS/, which has developed the programme.
© (1990) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
György Csáki "Application of computer-assisted photogrammetry in the documentation of excavations and care of monuments in Egypt", Proc. SPIE 1395, Close-Range Photogrammetry Meets Machine Vision, 13953E (1 August 1990); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2294365
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KEYWORDS
Photogrammetry

Computing systems

Cameras

Machine vision

Photography

Geodesy

Buildings

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