MedSTACH Symposium: Egyptian Museums, Digital Cultural Heritage and UCL's Role

This second part of the MedSTACH Symposium presents four papers on museum management, conservation science, digital documentation, and cross-institutional collaboration in the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by closing remarks from the organisers.

In the first paper, Ayman Abu El-Maqsoud of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities outlines the ministry's strategy since 2016 to recover from the economic and security disruptions after 2011. He describes efforts to increase Egyptian-led and foreign archaeological missions, resume stalled restoration projects, and reopen museums and sites across Egypt, including the Unas pyramid at Saqqara, the Minya Museum after its looting, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. He then details three national flagship projects: the Grand Egyptian Museum, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, and the redevelopment of the Giza Plateau visitor infrastructure, alongside recent repatriations of antiquities, including fourteen objects returned from Cyprus in April 2018.

Hassan Amin of the Grand Egyptian Museum Conservation Center follows with an overview of the centre's scientific laboratories and their analytical equipment, including X-ray diffraction, FTIR, scanning electron microscopy, and portable XRF. He presents case studies of collaborative analysis on gilded wood and chariots from the Tutankhamun collection, wood from the second solar boat at Giza, First Dynasty wood from Abu Rawash, and eighteenth-century sunken weapons recovered off the harbour of Alexandria.

Marinos Ioannides of the Cyprus University of Technology introduces the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage and the EU-funded Mnemosyne project. He describes the laboratory's 3D digitisation of painted churches in the Troodos Mountains and the Encleistra of Saint Neophytos in Paphos, as well as a volunteer initiative that has digitised over 50,000 historic family photographs across Cypriot villages for Europeana. Ioannides also addresses the destruction and looting of cultural heritage in wartime, before turning to how imaging technologies and 3D reconstruction can recover scientific knowledge from museum objects such as the Antikythera mechanism.

In the final paper, Andrew Bevan of University College London discusses how archaeological science can manage the growing volume of digital, spatial, and remotely sensed data through open standards, photogrammetry, and public-facing research. He outlines the profile of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, its doctoral training in applied heritage science, its existing links with Cypriot archaeology including the Leventis Gallery, and how UCL's strategy fits the four research domains of the proposed MedSTACH centre of excellence. The day concludes with closing remarks and acknowledgements from the organising consortium, including the University of Cyprus, the Cyprus University of Technology, and the Department of Antiquities, as the first phase of the Horizon 2020 Teaming proposal closes.