Archaeology News: 2024.04.20

HEZEKIAH IN THE BIBLE. The royal seal of Hezekiah, king of Judah, was discovered in the Ophel excavations under the direction of archaeologist Eilat Mazar. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor. The royal seal of King Hezekiah in the Bible was found in an archaeological excavation. The stamped clay seal, also known as a bulla, was discovered in the Ophel excavations led by Dr. Eilat Mazar at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was announced in a press release by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, under whose auspices the excavations were conducted. The bulla, which measures just over a centimeter in diameter, bears a seal impression depicting a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols and containing a Hebrew inscription that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.” The bulla was discovered along with 33 other stamped bullae during wet-sifting of dirt from a refuse dump located next to a 10th-century B.C.E. royal building in the Ophel. In the ancient Near East, clay bullae were used to secure the strings tied around rolled-up documents. The bullae were made by pressing a seal onto a wet lump of clay. The stamped bulla served as both a signature and as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the documents. FREE ebook: Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries. Finds like the Pool of Siloam in Israel, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored sight to a blind man. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. Who Was King Hezekiah in the Bible? King Hezekiah in the Bible, son and successor of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah (reigning c. 715–686 B.C.E.), was known for his religious reforms and attempts to gain independence from the Assyrians. The Ophel excavation area at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Andrew Shiva. In Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997), Biblical scholar P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., summarizes Hezekiah’s religious reforms: According to 2 Chronicles 29–32, Hezekiah began his reform in the first year of his reign; motivated by the belief that the ancient religion was not being practiced scrupulously, he ordered that the Temple of Yahweh be repaired and cleansed of niddâ (impurity). After celebrating a truly national Passover for the first time since the reign of Solomon (2 Chronicles 30:26), Hezekiah’s officials went into the countryside and dismantled the local shrines or “high places” (bamot) along with their altars, “standing stones” (masseboth) and “sacred poles” (’aásûeµrîm). The account of Hezekiah’s reform activities in 2 Kings 18:1–8 is much briefer. Although he is ... Continue Reading...

Archaeologists in Thebes have discovered a burial for victims of the 3rd-century C.E. Cyprian Plague. Photo by N. Cijan © Associazione Culturale per lo Studio dell’Egitto e del Sudan ONLUS. Archaeologists working in Thebes (modern Luxor) in Egypt discovered evidence of a plague that ravaged the Roman Empire in the 3rd century C.E. The so-called Cyprian Plague, likely caused by a form of measles or smallpox, was so devastating that one eyewitness believed the world was coming to an end. During excavations of the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru, the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL), led by Francesco Tiradritti, uncovered charred human remains saturated in lime. The lime, historically used as a disinfectant, was made in three kilns discovered in the complex. A huge bonfire where the victims were burned was also found. The archaeologists used pottery discovered in the kilns to date the burial to the third century C.E. Between about 250 and 271 C.E., a plague—now known as the Cyprian Plague—swept across Egypt and the rest of the Roman Empire, reportedly claiming more than 5,000 victims a day in Rome alone. Publishing their findings in Egyptian Archaeology, the MAIL researchers believe they have uncovered the burial site of the Theban plague victims. “We found evidence of corpses either burned or buried inside the lime. They had to dispose of them without losing any time,” Tiradritti told LiveScience. FREE eBook: Life in the Ancient World. Craft centers in Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—through the Mediterranean world. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box.   The modern name for the third-century plague is derived from early Christian writer St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (modern Tunisia), who vividly described the pandemic in a series of accounts. St. Cyprian believed that the pestilence signaled the end of the world: “The kingdom of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand,” he wrote. The disposal of the Theban plague victims was conducted in a funerary complex originally built in the seventh century B.C.E. for a steward named Harwa. Harwa’s successor Akhimenru built his own tomb there, and thereafter Egyptians continued to use the complex for burials. The funerary complex was, however, abandoned after the burial of the Cyprian Plague victims. Read more about the discovery of the Cyprian Plague remains in Luxor in LiveScience. This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on June 19, 2014. Related reading in Bible History Daily: Justinian Plague Linked to the Black Death Medicine in the Ancient World Epilepsy, Tutankhamun and Monotheism Heart Disease in Mummies 4,200-Year-Old Egyptian Skeleton Shows Earliest Evidence of Breast Cancer   The post The Cyprian Plague appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society. Continue Reading...

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in May 2013. It has been updated.—Ed. Who were the Minoans? The Minoan civilization is remembered for its ornate frescoes, including this Prince of the Lillies from the palace at Knossos. Who were the Minoans? Their civilization in Crete has long been considered Europe’s first great Bronze Age society. The floruit of the Minoan civilization, which spread across Crete in the third millennium B.C.E., occurred in the 18th–16th centuries B.C.E., in the late Middle Bronze Age and the start of the Late Bronze Age. The island is dotted with magnificent palaces, including labyrinthine Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia, and Minoan art and traditions have captivated and influenced the Mediterranean world for thousands of years. Despite their celebrated legacy, the Minoan civilization remains shrouded in mystery. We do not know what language was spoken on Crete, and the scripts of the early Minoan civilization—Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A—have eluded translation attempts for over a century. Despite extensive archaeological research exploring the history of Crete, the Minoan civilization has always kept close ties to the world of mythology. Sir Arthur Evans, the first person to carry out extensive excavations in Crete, named the society after the mythological king Minos. Crete’s  landscape serves as the setting for countless legends, including the birthplace of Zeus, the labyrinth where Theseus killed the Minotaur and the prison that Deadalus and Icarus fled with their ill-fated wings. But who were the people that left us with such grand mysteries and ornate palaces? Become a Member of Biblical Archaeology Society Now and Get More Than Half Off the Regular Price of the All-Access Pass! Explore the world’s most intriguing Biblical scholarship Dig into more than 9,000 articles in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s vast library plus much more with an All-Access pass. Sir Arthur Evans claimed that the ancestors of the Minoan civilization came from North Africa, but more recent scholars have suggested dozens of additional forefathers. On May 14, 2013, Nature Communications published the study “A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete,” analyzing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous tissue found in caves at the Cretan Lassithi plateau. It suggests that the Minoan civilization was comprised of local Europeans rather than outsiders. The Greek and American research team writes that “Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island” and that “shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis.” FREE ebook: Island Jewels: Understanding Ancient Cyprus and Crete. Read the fascinating history of these mythical Mediterranean islands. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. Who were the ... Continue Reading...

The so-called Ark Tablet, recently translated by Irving Finkel, is an Old Babylonian (1900-1700 B.C.E.) account of the flood in which the god Enki instructs Atrahasis—the Babylonian Noah—on how to build an ark. The twist? This Babylonian ark would have been circular. We all know the story of Noah’s Ark. Ever since George Smith’s 1872 translation of Babylonian texts similar to the Biblical Deluge (see “George Smith’s Other Find” below), we’ve also known about echoes of the Genesis narrative in pre-Biblical Mesopotamian texts. A recently translated Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1700 B.C.E.) tablet has literally reshaped our vision of the Babylonian vessel used to weather the storm and builds bridges across the floodwaters dividing the Biblical and Mesopotamian accounts of the flood. The Babylonian Flood Tradition Babylonian flood traditions have been familiar material for BAR readers since the early days of our magazine. Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s 1978 feature “What the Babylonian Flood Stories Can and Cannot Teach Us About the Genesis Flood” introduced the Sumerian Flood Story, the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrahasis Epic: The Babylonian flood stories contain many details which also occur in the flood story in Genesis. Such details in the story as the building of an ark, the placing of animals in the ark, the landing of the ark on a mountain, and the sending forth of birds to see whether the waters had receded indicate quite clearly that the Genesis flood story is intimately related to the Babylonian flood stories and is indeed part of the same “flood” tradition. However, while there are great similarities between the Biblical and Babylonian flood stories, there are also very fundamental differences, and it is just as important that we focus on these fundamental differences as on the similarities. The Babylonian accounts differ from each other. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the god Enki tasks Utnapishtim to save the world from the flood, and for his good deed, he is granted immortality (and subsequently, Gilgamesh’s envy). Later discoveries revealed that the account was an abridged and modified version of the Akkadian Atrahasis epic, a similar flood myth that was copied and adapted for centuries in the ancient Near East. Memories of an antediluvian (pre-flood) period were preserved throughout Mesopotamia: The Sumerian king list includes antediluvian kings, and reliefs of antediluvian sages known as apkallu figures (winged genies) lined the walls of Assyrian palaces and remain one of the most iconic forms of Mesopotamian art to this day. FREE ebook: Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and 3 tales of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. First Name:* Last Name:* Email Address: * * Indicates a required field. SUBMIT If you don’t want to receive the Bible History Daily newsletter, uncheck this box. How ... Continue Reading...

Since 2017, the District of Columbia has been awash in Biblical archaeology. From the opening of the Museum of the Bible to the National Geographic Museum’s exhibit, Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience, visitors to the nation’s capital have myriad opportunities to explore Biblical studies. The Tomb of Christ exhibit, located at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC, opened in 2017 and closed in 2019. The National Geographic Museum exhibit Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience presented an immersive 3-D look at the conservation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is believed to have been buried. Photo: Oded Balilty, AP for National Geographic. The focus of the Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience exhibit is Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the recent restoration and conservation project conducted by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). The church, first constructed by Roman emperor Constantine in 335 C.E., stands over the suspected site of the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion at Golgotha. Over the last two millennia, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and interior Aedicule—the shrine that houses the tomb—have been subjected to destructions, renovations, and alterations. In the 20th century, church leaders recognized the need to perform serious restoration and conservation of the church’s artwork and infrastructure. It was not until the past decade that the church seriously considered the application by the NTUA and secured a private donation to carry out the exploratory and innovative restoration. Watch a video on the National Geographic Museum’s Tomb of Christ exhibit. Documented by the National Geographic Society, the NTUA team employed state-of-the-art technologies like LiDAR and Ground-Penetrating Radar in their investigation into the structural weaknesses of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and even used thermal imaging to see paint pigments covered in hundreds of years of candle soot and grime. During the process, they mapped and 3-D-imaged the entire interior of the church in an effort to aid the preservation process. The exhibit details the history of the site along with the recent restoration efforts and utilizes the results of the 3-D imaging to create a unique tour of one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites. Interested in the latest archaeological technology? Researchers at the UCSD’s Calit2 laboratory released the free BAS eBook Cyber-Archaeology in the Holy Land — The Future of the Past, featuring the latest research on GPS, Light Detection and Ranging Laser Scanning, unmanned aerial drones, 3D artifact scans, CAVE visualization environments and much more. Upon entering the Tomb of Christ: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre Experience exhibit, the visitor first steps into a waiting room with images of the inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre accompanied by a short video that introduces the exhibit. Every few minutes, intimate groups of about a dozen are led into the first room, which offers a quick video on the history of Jerusalem and the site of the church itself. The group makes its way past a few shop stalls like ... Continue Reading...

128.2 Read Article By Michael E. Smith Reviewed by Thomas E. Emerson1Book Review Continue Reading...

ArticleA comparative study of four Etruscan terracotta urns from Chiusi, Italy, investigates their ancient polychromy and the urns’ trajectories through changing modern-day art market practices and museum conservation policies. The objects’ shared moldmade motif of a specific scene from Sophocles’ play Antigone makes this group particularly suitable for illustrating differences and similarities in their past and present materiality, uncovered by multispectral imaging and chemical analyses. Continue Reading...

ArticleRecent salvage excavations at Ḥorvat Tevet in northern Israel revealed a cemetery consisting of at least 25 burials dated to the Iron I period (11th–10th centuries BCE). In this article, the burial practices employed in this cemetery are analyzed in order to shed light on the social complexity, economy, and funerary rituals of a rural community in the Jezreel Valley in the period between the collapse of Egyptian rule in Canaan and the formation of early monarchic Israel. Continue Reading...

128.2 Read Article By Federica Maria Riso Reviewed by Alessandro Sebastiani1Book Review Continue Reading...

ArticleThis article proposes a new method for reconstructing how bronzewares were employed in everyday acts of food preparation in first-century CE Pompeii. Through the morphologically sensitive analysis of use alterations (physical or chemical changes to the body of an object resulting from use) exhibited by bronze kitchenwares recovered from 19 properties in the town, I retrace the life histories of individual implements and offer new insights into how particular forms tended to be used. Continue Reading...

 A large Roman villa was uncovered in Oxfordshire. Credit: Red River Archaeology GroupThe complex was adorned with intricate painted plaster and mosaics and housed a collection of small, tightly coiled lead scrolls. The Red River Archaeology Group (RRAG), the organization responsible for coordinating the excavation, announced in a press release that these elements suggest that the site may have been used for rituals or pilgrimages.Francesca Giarelli, the Red River Archaeology Group project officer and the site director, told CNN that the villa likely had multiple levels. The Roman villa complex, spanning an impressive 1,000 square meters (or 10,800 square feet) on its ground floor alone, was likely a prominent landmark visible from miles away.“The sheer size of the buildings that still survive and the richness of goods recovered suggest this was a dominant feature in the locality if not the wider landscape,” says Louis Stafford, a senior project manager at RRAG, in the statement.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Today, Smallhythe Place in Kent is best known as a bohemian rural retreat once owned by the Victorian actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edy Craig. As this month’s cover feature reveals, however, the surrounding fields preserve evidence of much earlier activity, including a medieval royal shipyard and a previously unknown Roman settlement (below, first image). Our next feature comes from the heavy clays of the Humber Estuary, where excavations sparked by theconstruction of an offshore windfarm have opened a 40km transect through northern Lincolnshire, with illuminating results (below, second image). We then take a tour of Iron Age, Roman, and medieval Winchester, tracing its evolution into a regional capital and later a royal power centre.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Tom Quad, Christ Church, Oxford University – image David BeardThe Oxford Experience summer school is held at Christ Church, Oxford. Participants stay in Christ Church and eat in the famous Dining Hall, that was the model for the Hall in the Harry Potter movies.This year there are twelve classes offered in archaeology.You can find the list of courses here… Continue Reading...

‘It was killing fields as far as the eye can see’ … the Latin-inscribed slabs crossing the site of the battle, which features in the British Museum show Legion.Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian‘Their heads were nailed to the trees’: what was life – and death – like for Roman legionaries?It was the defeat that traumatised Rome, leaving 15,000 soldiers slaughtered in a German field. As a major show explores this horror and more, our writer finds traces of the fallen by a forest near the RhineIt is one of the most chilling passages in Roman literature. Germanicus, the emperor Tiberius’s nephew, is leading reprisals in the deeply forested areas east of the Rhine, when he decides to visit the scene of the catastrophic defeat, six years before, of his fellow Roman, Quinctilius Varus. The historian Tacitus describes what Germanicus finds: the ghastly human wreckage of a supposedly unbeatable army, deep in the Teutoburg Forest. “On the open ground,” he writes, “were whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trunks of trees.”Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

Schematic drawing of the relationship between climatic change and sociological, physical, and biological factors influencing infectious disease outbreaks.Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk1033A team of geoscientists, Earth scientists and environmental scientists affiliated with several institutions in Germany, the U.S. and the Netherlands has found a link between cold snaps and pandemics during the Roman Empire.In their project, reported in the journal Science Advances, the group studied core samples taken from the seabed in the Gulf of Taranto and compared them with historical records.Researchers learn about climatic conditions in the distant past by analyzing sediment built up from river deposits. Tiny organisms that are sensitive to temperature, for example, respond differently to warm temperatures than to cold temperatures and often wind up in such sediment. Thus, the study of organic remains in sediment layers can reveal details of temperatures over a period of time.Read the rest of this article... Continue Reading...

In my previous post, I reviewed the Grand Egyptian Museum atrium and Tutankhamun: The Immersive Experience. In this post I will address the sculptures of the Grand Staircase, the only display of ancient Egyptian artefacts currently accessible to the visitor, apart from the statues in the atrium and the hanging obelisk. When the museum is fully open, the Grand Staircase will lead to the galleries of museum exhibits, but at the time of writing (February 2024) it can be visited as part of a guided tour that also includes the hanging obelisk and the atrium and follows the immersive Tutankhamun experience. Tickets can be booked via the GEM website. The Grand Staircase from the bottom. The usurped pair of colossal seated statues of a late Middle Kingdom Pharaoh are visible to the left (GEM45807 and GEM 45808), with a standing statue of Senusret III (GEM1709) between them. Beyond them are the Thutmosides and Ramessides. To the right of the staircase is a seated statue of Thutmose III (GEM 3769) and a colossal head of Akhenaten (GEM 2220), safely isolated from his religiously orthodox peers (Author photograph). Practicalities The Grand Staircase is located in the centre of the south side of the GEM, and is accessed by turnstiles in front of the granite statues of two Ptolemaic monarchs (probably Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II). There are four travelators to the right of the staircase, allowing visitors to ride up and access three intermediate landings and the top level of the staircase. For those with accessibilty needs the travelator will be most welcome, but there is nothing to stop you from walking up, and the stairs are interspersed with seating if you need a rest, or would like to stop and soak in the statuary and sculptures. Each landing has a large board explaining the theme of the next part of the staircase, and touchable models of significant artefacts for those who need tactile formats. Spaced regularly up the staircase, with easy access all around the individual artefacts, the statuary renders the staircase a kind of vertical sculpture gallery. Group of Ramessides as standard bearers. Seti II (GEM 2236), usurped from Amenmesse, is in the foreground with Ramses III (GEM 5993) behind him. Merneptah (GEM 2234) is just visible to the right of Seti II, with Roman Emperor Caracalla (GEM 6730) beyond. The royal image The sculptures of the Grand Staircase are broadly themed around Kingship, beginning with various royal statues, followed by sculptures showing the relationship between the King and the gods, and ending with those relating to the royal afterlife. In the lowest section of the staircase, we are introduced to various Pharaohs, beginning with an unfortunate late Middle Kingdom Pharaoh (probably Sensuret III or Amenemhat IV) whose pair of seated colossal statues were usurped initially by Ramses II and now bear the cartouches of Merneptah. Several statues of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut, and a rather nice black granite seated statue of Amenhotep III serve to represent the Thutmosides. The Ramessides are ... Continue Reading...

The courtyard of the Grand Egyptian Museum, with the entrance to the left and the hanging obelisk of Ramses II to the right. The route from the obelisk to the entrance is flanked by colonnades and shallow lakes. (Author photo) The colossus of Ramses II, in position in the atrium of the GEM. (Author photo). The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) at Giza will be Egypt’s modern, state-of-the-art, flagship museum for the country’s ancient past. Located just north of the Giza pyramids, the GEM will provide an opportunity for those short on time to visit both the Giza pyramids and some of the greatest artefacts from ancient Egypt. Over the last six years, there have been several high-publicity transfers of various ancient artefacts to the GEM. Tutankhamun’s treasures were on their way to the GEM when I last visited the Cairo Museum in Tahrir Square in 2017. The colossal granite statue of Ramses II from Memphis was moved to the GEM from Ramses Square in 2018, in a fittingly complex feat of engineering since the statue had to be kept upright in transit. Khufu’s solar boat, previously in a special museum next to the Great Pyramid, was moved to the GEM in a grand parade in 2021. The ancient Egyptian designers of pyramids and transporters of heavy granite obelisks would surely be impressed at their descendants accomplishments. Practicalities Although the formal opening has been delayed, it is now possible to visit the GEM atrium, Grand Staircase, and Children’s Museum, as well as the shops and audio-visual exhibits. I visited in February 2024, enjoying a guided tour of the Grand Staircase and an immersive Tutankhamun audio-visual experience, entitled Tutankhamun: The Immersive Experience. You can also book a GEM Children’s Museum tour, although time slots are limited. Unfortunately, I can’t review the Children’s Museum tour as there were no tickets on the day we went. Both the adult and the children’s museum tours take about 45 minutes. The Immersive Tutankhamun takes about an extra half an hour and takes place before the tour. So if you want to do the tour and the Immersive Tutankhamun, allow at least an hour and half for both. Longer if you want to explore the Grand Staircase at the end of the tour. Tickets are available online via the GEM website. I was pleasantly surprised that although I visited during the UK half-term holidays, it was possible to book tickets for the same day. I suspect that once the GEM is fully open, it will become much busier, and advance booking will be advisable. The hanging obelisk in the courtyard of the Grand Egyptian Museum. (Author photograph) First Impressions The GEM is undoubtedly a beautiful and impressive building, which echoes ancient Egyptian architecture, but thankfully avoids pastiche. The main entrance is on the south side, reached by a sloping courtyard containing the only hanging obelisk in existence. This obelisk, of Ramses II from Tanis, is the partner to the Tahrir Square obelisk, and has cartouches of Ramses II on ... Continue Reading...

In my previous posts, I explained how to pan-sharpen and then mosaic Worldview-3 satellite imagery. The final phase of processing the ‘ortho-ready’ imagery is ‘orthorectification‘. To orthorectify the Worldview-3 imagery I used a 2m resolution digital surface model (DSM) generated by Digitalglobe from a stereo-pair of Worldview-2 satellite images of the same area of Middle Egypt as the Worldview-3 imagery. The DSM arrived as a single-band 2m resolution .tif where the value of each 2m pixel represents the surface height (the ground level if it was visible to the sensor, or the top of the tree or building that obscured the ground) at that point. Comparison of the pan-sharpened, mosaicked Worldview-3 imagery (left) and the Worldview-2 digital surface model (right). (Worldview imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging) Orthorectifying Orthorectifying shifts the satellite imagery using the digital surface model so that the imagery more accurately reflects the position of the features on the topography. There are multiple ways to orthorectify in ArcGIS using a DSM: in the Layer Properties> Display tab; in the Image Analysis window; or with the ‘Create Ortho Corrected Raster Dataset‘ in the Data Management>Raster>Raster Processing toolset. For these methods to work you will need the .RPB file (which I mentioned in the ‘pansharpening post‘) containing the RPCs for the satellite imagery. This .RPB file MUST live in the same folder and have the same file name as the image you wish to orthorectify. You can find a video of me using these methods to orthorectify the .TIL files of the satellite imagery here on my Youtube channel and below. Video of me orthorectifying the Worldview-3 .TIL file using a DSM in ArcGIS. AcknowledgementsAll the images in this blog post were created using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit http://www.esri.com. Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging. Subscribe Follow me on: Google Scholar Academia Researchgate Social media Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Search my website Find out more Asyut Region Project Research About Publications Contact me Freelance Archaeology Related posts December 27, 2023 Orthorectifying Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi October 25, 2023 Pan-sharpening a Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi September 27, 2023 Mosaicking pan-sharpened Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi 1 2 3 … 5 Next Page Continue Reading...

Earlier this year, I described how to create and pan-sharpen a multi-spectral 3-band composite Landsat-8 raster. Although I’m all for using free satellite imagery, sometimes it isn’t enough and you need to buy high-resolution satellite imagery from a suitable provider. Such was the case for my work on the archival material from Hogarth’s excavations in the necropolis of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi in 1906-7. As part of the project, we were able to purchase some high-resolution Worldview-3 satellite imagery of the site, and a 2m digital surface model (DSM), generated from stereo-pair Worldview-2 images. In order to make the best use of these remotely-sensed data, I needed to process the satellite imagery to create a pan-sharpened and orthorectified image as a base map for my research. Satellite imagery – what you get In order to understand why I needed to process the satellite imagery, we need to dig into what it comprises and how it’s delivered to the user. The precise nature of satellite imagery varies somewhat depending on which sensor it comes from, who you obtained it from, whether you paid for it, and what level of processing was already applied when you received it. I received the Worldview-3 satellite ‘ortho-ready’, meaning that it was prepared for me to pan-sharpen and orthorectify it. Each satellite image comprised two folders both named by the same numeric code, one filename ending ‘_MUL’ and one filename ending ‘_PAN’. The MUL folder contains the multi-spectral bands and the PAN folder contains the higher-resolution panchromatic band. PAN files for Worldview-3 ortho-ready imagery. Each folder contains a series of .tif tiles, each of which covers part of the area purchased, while the .TIL file, covers the entire area occupied by those .tifs in a single raster file. There are also .IMD files, .RPB files, .XML files, and several .txt files with additional information in each folder. The Worldview-3 multispectral data showing the individual tifs (left) and the .TIL file (right). (Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging) Pan-sharpening As with the Landsat-8 data, the Worldview-3 multispectral bands are lower (c.1.3m) resolution than the panchromatic band (c.0.3m) and need to be pan-sharpened to create a 0.3m resolution multispectral image. Because the Worldview-3 data is provided as a series of .tifs, it’s necessary to pan-sharpen each of the multispectral .tif files separately using the equivalent panchromatic .tif file. Once all the .tif files have been pan-sharpened I will mosaic them into a new raster. As with the Landsat-8 imagery, I pan-sharpened all the .tif files using the ‘Create Pansharpened Raster Dataset‘ tool of the Data Management>Raster>Raster processing toolset of ArcGIS ArcTools. I used the Gram-Schmitt method, as it allowed me to automatically weight the bands by choosing ‘Worldview-3’ under ‘Sensor’. Although it’s also possible to pan-sharpen using Symbology tab of the layer’s properties and in the Image Analysis Window I chose to use the ‘Create Pansharpened Raster Dataset’ tool because it allows me to specify which bands should be included in the resulting raster rather than relying ... Continue Reading...

In my previous post, I explained how to pan-sharpen individual .tifs of high-resolution Worldview-3 satellite imagery. Worldview-3 satellite imagery is provided as a series of .tif tiles covering the area purchased, but because each .tif tile has a slightly different histogram (the frequency of each colour within the image varies from .tif to .tif) the imagery exhibits abrupt discontinuities at the edges of the .tifs. Mosaicking These .tifs now need mosaicking into a single raster image, providing a consistent colour map, and permitting further research into the entire dataset. There are various mosaicking tools available in ArcGIS. Which you choose depends on what you intend to do with the data, but I am going to use the Mosaic to New Raster tool of the Data Management>Raster>Raster Processing toolset of ArcTools. The tool asks for the rasters to mosaic, the output folder, the output filename, the coordinate reference system, pixel type, number of bands, and the mosaic and colourmap operators. Most of these are fairly straightforward, but it’s worth noting that the filename needs to include the (e.g. .tif) extension, and the number of bands needs to match the number in the original rasters. The final part of the Mosaic to New Raster tool asks for the ‘mosaic Operator’ and the ‘Mosaic Colour Map Mode’. The ‘Mosaic Operator’ refers to the method of mosaicking overlapping areas. The Worldview-3 tiles shouldn’t have a significant overlap, but I prefer to use the ‘Blend’ operator, which blends the data in the overlapping area. Similarly, the Mosaic Colour Map Mode’ determines which of the tiles should provide the colour map for the new mosaicked raster. Again I prefer ‘Match’, which considers all the colourmaps. You can watch a video of me mosaicking the pan-sharpened .tifs on my Youtube Channel or in the embedded link above. The resulting pan-sharpened, mosaicked imagery provides a much better base map of the Asyut area: Comparison of the Worldview-3 imagery after pan-sharpening (left) and after mosaicking (right). (Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging) Acknowledgements All the images in this blog post were created using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit http://www.esri.com. Worldview-3 imagery © 2018 DigitalGlobe Inc. supplied by European Space Imaging. Subscribe Follow me on: Google Scholar Academia Researchgate Social media Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Search my website Find out more Asyut Region Project Research About Publications Contact me Freelance Archaeology Related posts December 27, 2023 Orthorectifying Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi October 25, 2023 Pan-sharpening a Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi September 27, 2023 Mosaicking pan-sharpened Worldview-3 satellite imagery of Gebel Asyut el-Gharbi 1 2 3 … 5 Next Page Continue Reading...