Project Team and Partner Institutions

Led by UCL, with project management provided by RB Toth Associates, this project involved a variety of individuals across the partner institutions, running from May 2015 - December 2017.

UCL

The project was led by Melissa Terras (UCL Centre for Digital Humanities) and Adam Gibson (UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering). Kathryn Piquette was the Senior Research Associate and developed the modern surrogate "Phantom" papyrus for imaging with all technologies in the UK and USA. Alice Stevenson, Curator of the Petrie, provided expertise into the papyrus cartonnage, with additional support coming from other Petrie staff including Pia Edqvist, Curatorial Assistant.

RB Toth Associates

Michael B. Toth provided program management and spectral imaging services across the project, particularly for the imaging in the United States of America. Bill Christens-Barry with Equipoise Imaging LLC supported imaging and image processing.

University of Manchester

Roberta Mazza provided expertise regarding Egyptian papyri. The Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care is providing digitization and spectral imaging of papyrus fragments from the John Rylands Collection, with imaging and data hosting support by Carol Burrows, Gwen Riley Jones and James Robinson.

University of California at Berkeley

Todd Hickey and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer selected cartonnage from the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri (CTP) at the Bancroft Library for imaging. This included a number of pieces for x-ray and spectral imaging, as well as a small fragment that is being mailed around the US for standard imaging and characterization.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Dula Parkinson used the Advanced Light Source (ALS) for micro x-ray computerized tomography imaging of papyrus fragments from the CTP.

Stanford University

Kristen St. John and Elizabeth Ryan from the Stanford University Libraries selected cartonnage from their papyrus collection for x-ray imaging at SLAC.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Uwe Bergmann coordinated the x-ray imaging effort and conducted x-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging of cartonnage at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL).

Duke University

The Duke Libraries, Duke Eye Center and the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering collaborated to provide cartonnage imaging and processing.

 

Duke Libraries: Beth Doyle provided conservation and handling of the fragile papyrus to, from and within all the campus facilities. Joshua Sosin selected mummy cartonnage for imaging with OCT and spectral imaging from the papyrus collection in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Mike Adamo and Molly Bragg from the Digital Production Center provided the support and infrastructure needed for spectral imaging of the papyrus and other objects. Ryan Baumann from the Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (DC3) provides photographic documentation and collaboration support.

 

Duke Eye Center and the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering: Under the leadership of Cynthia Toth, M.D., Sina Farsiu, Director of the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Laboratory, imaged the cartonnage with an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging imaging system supported by Guorong Li, and processed the images. Michael Crose and Sanghoon Kim scanned fragments with a scanning OCT system developed by Adam Wax.

Library of Congress

Meghan Hill provided baseline imaging and spectral analysis of papyrus fragments before and after x-ray imaging, as well as data integration support, under the direction of Fenella France, Chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division. Mark MacKenzie at the Museums of New Mexico also supported this work.

Bruker Corporation

Senior Application Scientist Lee Drake provided elemental analysis of cartonnage from the Berkeley and Stanford collections prior to x-ray imaging, supported by Andrea Tullos and Bruce Kaiser.

Arcadia Fund

The Arcadia Fund supported this project as part of its continued grants to museums, archives and universities to preserve at-risk cultural heritage.