Читать книгу The Tomb Chapel of Menna (TT 69) - Группа авторов - Страница 8

Foreword

The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) has supported significant conservation and training efforts in Egypt since 1995 with the generous support of the American people through successive grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). To date, ARCE has successfully completed some sixty projects on monuments and objects, ranging in date from Egypt’s prehistory to the Ottoman period, and in material from conserving delicate ancient artifacts and Coptic icons to entire monastic churches and Islamic structures. In all of these undertakings, ARCE works closely with our colleagues in Egypt’s Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) and with an international body of scholars and professionals, all with the goal of preserving Egypt’s rich cultural heritage for the enjoyment, enlightenment, and benefit of future generations wordwide, for Egypt’s cultural heritage is truly the world’s cultural heritage.

The conservation and documentation of the Tomb Chapel of Menna Project, so well presented in the current volume, was funded through ARCE’s Egyptian Antiquities Conservation Program (EAC), by a grant from USAID received in 2004. The project itself was implemented between 2007 and 2009, under the direction of Professor Melinda Hartwig of Georgia State University, who assembled a remarkable team of specialists to document and conserve this important Theban tomb in innovative ways. As such, the project and its resulting publication represent new developments in the fields of archaeology, art history, conservation, documentation, and Egyptology. In this way, the volume makes a significant addition to the literature of these fields. In addition, the painstaking documentation of the tomb chapel, at all its levels, is an invaluable record of one of Egypt’s most important surviving New Kingdom private monuments.

A crucial aspect of this impressive documentation is its non-invasive methodology, surely an important consideration for future documentation and conservation efforts. These included spectroscopic analysis and high-resolution digital photography to guide the team of scholars, archaeometrists, scientists, epigraphers, and technicians to undertake a thorough analytic documentation and conservation project. While the results are surely to be recognized by scholars and specialists, the authors have also approached their study with an eye to a more general reader, and many will be drawn to it by the beauty of the high-quality illustrations and the informed commentary of the text that so well capture the lively and stunning examples of ancient Egyptian tomb painting found in the tomb of Menna.

In co-publishing this book with the American University in Cairo Press as the fifth volume in our joint conservation series, ARCE well demonstrates its commitment to assist with the preservation and dissemination of Egypt’s incomparable cultural heritage, making available the information gleaned from the conservation and documentation efforts it has sponsored through its collaboration with Egypt’s Ministry of State for Antiquities and USAID. Indeed, this thorough and groundbreaking study of the well-known and visited Tomb of Menna is a most fitting example of a combination of humanities scholarship with science and technology, both to better preserve a standing monument from antiquity for future generations, and to record it, not only for the benefit of scholars, but for those who may never have the opportunity to visit it in person.

As always, we at ARCE are most grateful to all of those who have combined to make this project and publication possible, and especially to our colleagues in Egypt’s Ministry of State for Antiquities, to the United States Agency for International Development for its generous and thoughtful support, to Professor Hartwig and her team, and to our friends at the American University in Cairo Press.

Gerry D. Scott, III

Director