Projects

This project is a collaborative effort between ISIS and the Special Projects Department. It is a digital repository documenting the last 200 years of Egypt’s modern history through tens of thousands of varying items, such as documents, pictures, audios, videos, maps, articles, stamps, coins, etc. that created an index of 14 different material types. The interface and the underlying infrastructure of the repository allow the user to browse by facets, thus allowing for optimum data filtration and a more precise browsing. The repository is structured around five main themes with each of these divided into subtopics, thus creating an index of over 500 dimensions. Each item in the repository is classified according to one or more of the theme subtopics as well as a certain material type, resulting in the creation of a multidimensional web of materials and themes interrelating with each other to enable the user to explore the connections between the different sources in the repository. This offers an exceptional informative visual tool for the user to overview Egypt’s modern history. Additionally, the repository’s infrastructure was designed to accommodate expandability, thus allowing continuous addition to the content.

For the past five years, the Egyptian Center for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CultNat) and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), together with IBM, have been working to bring the awe-inspiring experience of Egypt to the world through a project known as ‘Eternal Egypt.’ It represents a unique partnership using innovative technologies to create an interactive, multimedia experience of Egyptian cultural artifacts, places and history for a global audience. The website covers descriptions of more than 2,000 artifacts, key historical characters and archeological sites and wraps them in a variety of stories and virtual tours of famous sites and museums. The descriptive information is available in three languages: Arabic, English, and French. It is also supported by an innovative text-to-speech technology which generates dynamic audio narrations. A little over one year since the 100th anniversary of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, anyone with access to the internet is now able to enter a three-dimensional reconstruction of Tutankhamun's tomb. This experience is only one small part of Eternal Egypt, which is also accessible by handheld digital guide in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, by cell phone for visitors to the pyramids at Giza and Luxor Temple in Upper Egypt, or through the Eternal Egypt web site. The Eternal Egypt web site offers an unprecedented experience of high-resolution images and three-dimensional reconstructions of Egyptian monuments and antiquities, as well as virtually-reconstructed environments, panoramic views and other images of present-day Egypt that are captured by robotic cameras located in key areas from the top of Karnak Temple to the streets of Old Cairo. An innovative, interactive map and timeline will also guide Eternal Egypt’s visitors through Egypt's cultural heritage, while a ‘context navigator’ allows them to appreciate the complex relationships between objects, places and personalities from Egypt's past in a unique, web-like display.

The BA has taken the initiative to digitize and avail online for free, the 200-year old original masterpiece Description de l’Egypte. A 20-volume book that was produced during Napoleon Bonaparte’s military expedition to Egypt in 1798. The book was the collaborative work of 150 prominent scientists and scholars in addition to some 2000 talented artists and technicians that were assigned to capture the Egyptian culture and civilization in unmatched depth and detail. And to mold this masterpiece in today’s technology, the BA International School of Information Science has taken the initiative to digitize and integrate the whole collection on a multi-featured searchable interface tailored for the user’s convenience.

L'Art Arabe is one of the most important books on the Islamic monuments of Egypt. It consists of four volumes compiled by the French orientalist Prisse d'Avennes, one of the greatest pre-20th century Egyptologists, and was published in 1877. To preserve this valuable collection, ISIS has digitized the three–plate volumes (222 plates) and the text volume (388 pages).The material has been scanned and processed in high resolution. The processing phase included treatment of the damaged pages and restoration of the defected parts while keeping the original appearance. The text volume was OCRed (Optical Character Recognition) to provide a full text search facility. The digitized output was integrated on a virtual browser and published on the Internet. The website was launched during the 34th session of the General Conference of UNESCO in October 2007.