Creating (relative) certainty in the research of [iconographic programmes of] Ancient Egyptian elite tombs with a database by streamlining and collecting relevant data from old and present-day publications

René VAN WALSEM

(Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Methodology/Approach:
Old Kingdom (±2600-2100 BC) elite tombs (convenientlycalled “mastabas”) contain iconographic programmes mainly representing so-called “scenes of daily” life on widely different topics, usually accompanied by texts. For in-depth analysis and comparative issues it is of great importance for a scholar to be sure that he /she has taken into account all available published material. The objective was reached by creating a digital file for each of the presently 337 published elite tombs: “the Leiden Mastaba Project” (LMP). A file comprises a plan with numbered rooms and walls, multi-coloured wall schemes showing the layout in registers of the main themes and sub-themes, a concise description of the scenes, and, if present, the texts in hieroglyphs, transliteration, and translation. Each main theme coincides with a colour (e.g., bright green for “Slaughtering”), further identified by its abbreviation (SL) in the top left corner, while in the middle a sub-theme abbreviation figures (e.g., D= “Desert cattle”; C= “Cattle, domestic”). All data were stored in a relational database organised in a number of “Indexes” (list of all recorded tombs (LMP no., name of owner, location, most likely date), codes, museum numbers, concordance, themes) and the “Database” in the strict sense. It can be approached by a “Search module” (several query variables on various topics can be combined (e.g., “show all scenes of the slaughtering of desert cattle at Giza from king Kheops till king Wenis”) the results of which can be presented as lists, tomb plans, and wall schemes), a “Statistics module” (idem, to be presented as pie and/or bar-diagrams each accompanied by lists of the tombs involved) and a “Texts module” (idem on textual matters only). By clicking on the results one can switch to the “general data” (summary of basic data plus all wall numbers), to the “full record” or to specific “walls” of a tomb. Note that by using wall schemes and abbreviations the essentials of all topics can be processed without copy right problems, since not a single illustration of a publication is needed.

Results of the work:
The database will be published on a CD: MastaBase.

Keywords: iconographic programmes, ancient Egyptian elite tombs, relational database