Egyptian tombs discovered with infrared satelite imagery

Space archaeologist, Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak

Space archaeologist, Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak

Remote sensing with 1-m resolution infrared satellite imagery has allowed US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak to discover a multitude of new archeological sites in Egypt. Her work was the subject of a BBC documentary where after over a year of data analysis and interpretation, she went to Egypt to perform several test excavations where her team’s imagery analysis was confirmed. The bricks that were used by ancient Egyptians to build their structures were more dense than the surrounding soil, allowing them to be seen on the satellite imagery, even when buried. There is a quote from Dr Parcak that I think is fantastic:

Indiana Jones is old school, we’ve moved on from Indy, sorry Harrison Ford.

The Google Earth Blog link has some links to the imagery and Google Earth files that show some of her work.

[Source: BBC via Google Earth Blog. Image: Google Earth Blog]

2 Comments

  1. This is amazing! I have always loved history, especially ancient civilizations. Maybe this will lead to more detail on how advanced they really were.

    Also of note, the lead researcher is a the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Although not an alumnus myself (Auburn – War Eagle!), I am a native and resident of Alabama and never knew we had such Egyptologists at UAB!

  2. I agree Robert, this kind of thing is very cool. It’s amazing that someone sitting thousands of miles away can be so instrumental in finding new archaeological sites. And you are right, you would expect to hear of Egyptologists at Oxford or something.

Comments are closed.