Internet: Archaeologists Bring Egyptian Excavation to the Web

Through the miracle of the Internet, you can now watch in on an ongoing Egyptian excavation. As Walter Cronkite once said, "You are there."

Johns Hopkins University Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her team are again sharing their work with the world through an online diary, a digital window into the day-to-day life on an archaeological expedition.

This month, visitors to Hopkins in Egypt Today at http://www.jhu.edu/egypttoday will be able to peruse photos of the Johns Hopkins group working for their 13th year in Luxor.

Bryan, the Alexander Badawy Professor in Egyptian Art and Archaeology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins, will continue to explore the Egyptian New Kingdom (1567 to 1085 B.C.E.), considered "the golden age" of temple building in Egypt.

According to Bryan, today's Luxor is rich in discoveries from the New Kingdom of more than 3,000 years ago. This is the eighth year that Bryan and her crew will be working at the temple of the goddess Mut. In years past, their finds have included food processing and industrial installations such as bakeries and granaries and, in 2006, the remarkable discovery of a statue of Queen Tiye, now housed in the Cairo Museum.

The goal of the Hopkins in Egypt Today Web site is to educate visitors by exposing them to the elements of an archaeological work in progress. University photographer Jay VanRensselaer will capture images of the team as they work. The Web site's daily photos and detailed captions emphasize not only discoveries but also the teamwork among Bryan, her colleagues and their "gufti," the local crew members who are trained in archaeology.

The Web site typically garners more than 50,000 hits every winter when the dig is taking place.

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