Abusir, the House of Osiris, is the name given to an Egyptian necropolis of the Old Kingdom period. This site is a part of a huge area, from Giza to Dahshur, rich of archaeological remains and covered by many pyramids. The paper is reporting concisely some archaeological studies on Abusir. We start from the description given by Pliny the Elder and end proposing the use of Google Maps.
are therefore considered as the oldest surviving papyri to date [9]. A large number of additional fragments were discovered during the following excavations, as for example, those found by a Czech expedition in some cult complexes. Two Italian scholars, Vito Maragioglio and Celeste Rinaldi, contributed to the researches on Abusir too. They surveyed the site providing rich information on the Abusir pyramids and improving the plans of the monuments [4]. At the same time, the beginning of 1960s, a Czech archaeological expedition started to work in this area. After a geophysical survey of the whole site, the Czech team transferred, in the mid 1970s, its researches to the not yet investigated southern area of the necropolis. The Czech Institute of Egyptology is continuing excavations at Abusir, the team led by Miroslav Bárta [10]. Abusir is shown in Fig. 3. The image was obtained, after a suitable processing to enhance details and contrast, from the Google Maps imagery. The satellite survey shows how huge is this archaeological site, with several complexes not yet completely excavated. It seems that there are 14 pyramids at this site [11]. According to Wikipedia item, the quality of these constructions is inferior to those of the Fourth Dynasty. It could be due to a decrease in royal power or to a poorer economy. "They are smaller than their predecessors, and are built of low quality local stone". That is, less resources for ostentation, echoing Pliny. Moreover, the item is telling that all of the major pyramids at Abusir were built as step pyramids. The largest of them, the Pyramid of Neferirkare, was in origin a step pyramid some seventy metres high and then modified in a pyramid with smooth faces, by filling its steps with loose masonry. We can verify this point by means of Google Maps. Let us observe the Neferirkare complex: it is given in Fig. 4. The original steps of the pyramid are clearly visible.
To have an idea of a possible use of the Google Maps imagery in archaeological studies, let us consider the Necropolis, the location shown in Fig. 3. From these Maps, we can have an image that, at a first glance, seems not so useful (see the upper part of Fig. 5). After processing it by means of AstroFracTool, a program based on the fractional gradient calculus, Iris and GIMP [12], we obtain the image in lower panel. What in the upper panel looked as insignificant spots are now ruins, probably tombs, buried in the sand (in Fig. 6, a detail of the area is proposed). A last example of image processing is shown in Fig. 7, on the unfinished and the Sahure pyramids. After the proposed examples, it is seems that the Google satellite images, accompanied by a proper processing, can be useful in archaeological survey, as they can be for geophysical or geopolitical researches. The processing reveals many details, that are usually unnoticed in the maps. In the case of Abusir, the ruins that we see after the processing, probably, have been already discovered and studied. It is possible however, that in other cases, the proposed method can helping in improvement of archaeological knowledge.
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