Talking Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Pyramids

Still on the topic of ‘Satellite Archaeology’ surveyor Rob Rosa, writes about using satelilites and sophisticated tools such as the Carlson SurvCE while surveying an archaeological site located at the base of Jebel Barkal, a sandstone table-mountain close to the Nile River and about 390km south of the Egyptian border.

As we came upon the small mud brick structures that made up the town, there it was. Jebel Barkal is a very imposing figure. Tim had described the mountain as “small” before, and in the distance it was. The closer we got, however, the more I got to see of the mountain I had viewed on Google Earth so many times before. After arriving at the compound where we would be staying for the next four weeks, we decided to venture out to the site. It was amazing. After some 4,000 years, many of the walls of some of the oldest religious temples were reduced to nothing more than two meters high. Many columns were still standing, some elaborately carved. Many relief blocks, carved with figures and icons I had only seen in books, movies, and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, were sitting right in front of me. I was standing in the middle of history. My first day on the job, I began by setting up the GPS base station. There were no survey stakes or hubs available, and rebar was nowhere to be found. Once everything was operating correctly, I walked down to a shop near our compound in search of a soda. Along the way, I found a valve from a truck motor. It was about 15 centimeters long, with a head about 4 centimeters in diameter–a perfect monument. I set it as the GPS base point, took ties to the nearest building corners, and set up the tripod, which did not move the entire four weeks….

View Larger Map View in Google Earth

You can explore the area in Google Maps by interacting with the embedded map above.

The Jebel in 3D
Another task that I gladly took on was to compile the previous year’s data, incorporate the new topographical surveys, and then create a 3D model of the mountain. Using Carlson Survey, I was able to piece together earlier 3D polyline data and the spot shot data per day to create a 3D model including the landscape. Pawel was then able to take a DXF of my model, and incorporate five separate artistic 3D renderings of the temples he had done in previous years. By matching the temples to the baseline coordinates, he created a picture of what the site may have looked like thousands of years ago. While not complete–the top 15 to 20 meters of the mountain will need to be surveyed to complete the picture–the current terrain model is very true to life.

Read the origial article online or download the PDF: Finding my Inner Indiana Jones – Using Carlson SurvCE to Survey History

View the area in Google Earth: Jebel Barkal

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