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A rock art panel from the site of el-Hosh featuring two boats along with human depictions, including one with royal regalia, alongside a presumed captor with a Nubian captive, adds a further important example of early royal iconography in Egyptian rock art. This early royal representation stands alongside the well-known panels from Nag el-Hamdulab and a depiction from the Wadi Mahamid in Elkab as the earliest certain depictions of kingship in the rock art medium. The three examples are roughly contemporaneous, with the el-Hosh panel sharing many features with the Nag el-Hamdulab figures. Despite the similarity we see in the smaller el-Hosh panel we note the evidence that its production was of a less official nature. The display of a presumed captive and beheaded Nubian appears to reflect local conflict in the region during the period of production. ispartof: Archeo-Nil vol:32 pages:25-25 status: published

Heritage artefacts and collections are crossroads where historical context, materiality, content and technology join. In the field of heritage science, scholars deploy methodologies from the humanities and applied sciences to increase the understanding of heritage artefacts and collections through the use of advanced technology and infrastructure. Within VIEW, KU Leuven Core Facility for Heritage Science and Digitisation Technologies, several labs have joined their expertise and infrastructure. VIEW deploys digitisation technologies and techniques such as advanced imaging, high-end digitisation and data extraction to create rich datasets, provide new insights and facilitate cutting edge research of documentary heritage, heritage collections and heritage materials in a nondestructive way. The focused use of such infrastructure and technology represents an important accelerator in conservation science projects for documents on papyrus, parchment and paper.

Interactive Pixel Based file formats have been produced over the course of the last two decades by many stakeholders active in the Heritage sector. It is a global story. Its use has facilitated research and dissemination strategies for vast numbers of artefacts, conservation interactions and scientific studies. The technology has been explored and elaborated via varying technical strategies; each one of them delivering specific results with visual benefits and paths for computational research. This situation is also reflected in the many naming conventions used for this technology: Relightable Images, Multi-Light Image Collections, Reflectance Transformation Imaging, Multi-Light Images, Multi-Light Reflectance, … . It has been the aim of the pixel+ project to bring the existing spectrum of these technologies closer together, by A. creating a universal web interface for its most popular processed output formats (objective 1), B. finding solutions to store and disseminate these type of multi-layered datasets in a new open, web optimize file format (objective 2), C. providing a conversion tool allowing stakeholders to optimize their existing datasets into the new file format (objective 2). Throughout the pixel+ project the general collective term for the targeted technology is Single Camera Multi-Light (SCML), the newly proposed file format: .scml. SCML techniques have been used extensively to study objects under varying light conditions. Intuitively, we humans perform this technique to study local surface detail, the shape of an object or reflectance properties, e.g. by using a flash light at raking angles to reveal the tiny surface details. These visual cues that change under varying light conditions are captured with cameras and serve as input for various algorithms that model this light dependent pixel intensity (i.e. formulate the final pixel color as a function of the light direction) or even learn surface and material properties from these cues. Two major SCML approaches lay in the scope of the pixel+ project. On the one hand the Belgian system of the Portable Light Dome (PLD) and on the other hand the US solution with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI); sometimes also known as Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM), piloted by Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI, San Francisco). The latter includes the axe expanded by mainly ISTI/CNR researchers in Italy. Both approaches have proven their added value over the last 20 years for the visual documenting, study and multi-layered digital preservation of heritage objects. In the meantime countless past and ongoing research and imaging projects, initiated and funded all over the world, illustrate this clearly. For all these projects and their outcomes pixel+ has provided new solutions. Both platforms have been developed by separate research groups, with a different focus. This resulted in dissimilar interactive pixel based file formats, making it challenging to interchange the information processed and stored in their respective output datasets. Therefore, the pixel+ project aimed to merge the technologies of both approaches into a single consultation platform that will be capable of displaying all existing interactive pixel based file formats with their respective viewing modes and metadata. This viewer has the ability to illuminate the virtual model of the heritage object and consult the processed datasets with visual styles developed within the research spheres of both platforms. Moreover, as both methods are alike in terms of required input and processed output, pixel+ focusses on other types of integration, resulting in new additional visual styles for processed data, as well as a novel reprocessing pipeline for existing source image sets. Because RTI and PLD are still relatively young technologies, knowledge of their technicalities and wide range of potential benefits is still sub-par. A new dissemination website has been launched which explains these technologies and their derivatives. It contains best practices and use cases, and shares community updates. As it's in the interest of the whole community, the website doesn’t shy away from discussing other future computational photography techniques to further elaborate viewing, processing and/or digital preserving interactive pixel based file formats. The source codes of both the pixel+ viewer and this companion website are on GitHub. ispartof: BRAIN-be Pioneer Projects pages:1-51 status: Published online

Developments over the last decennium in the field of nondestructive art technical research have provided new possibilities for examining the current condition of the Codex Eyckensis and exploring the materials used by the illuminator and scribe. By comparing and combining the results of macro x-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) and Raman spectroscopy analysis with the images taken by multispectral microdome (MSLD) (photometric stereo), the composition of the parchment, ink, and paint layers could be characterized and visualized. ispartof: ICOM-CC 19th Triennial Conference Preprints, Beijing, 17–21 May 2021 ispartof: Transcending Boundaries: Integrated Approaches to Conservation. location:Beijng date:17 May - 21 May 2021 status: published

Egyptologists have paid much attention to inscribed administrative seals and their impressions. By contrast, the so-called figure seals, which render no or hardly any text, but instead use icons and signs inspired on hieroglyphs which however yield no coherent sense, have received far less attention. Usually this material is related to the lower strata of society. According to current interpretations, it is rooted in the Egyptian culture of the later Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. The phenomenon would be a corollary of the decreasing prominence of central state authority in this era. Proceeding from a number of recent early Old Kingdom finds from al-Shaykh Saʽīd/Wādī Zabaydā, the present article argues that a) figure seals were continually in use from the late Predynastic until the late Old Kingdom and b) different from what is commonly assumed, stamp seals were in existence long before the late Old Kingdom. The article challenges the relationship between these object categories and developments specifically in late Old Kingdom Egypt. ispartof: Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde vol:145 issue:2 pages:187-204 status: published

Reflectance imaging has proven its value over the past decade. Thanks to this imaging technique cultural heritage artefacts can now be studied and presented in ways which were/are inconceivable with established digital photography. Research centres and users groups all over the world have experimented with the approach. Cuneiform studies in particular have benefited from these new possibilities. Throughout the development of this technology clay tablets with inscribed text and impressed seals were recorded with different methods in the reflectance imaging arsenal. ispartof: Portable Light Dome System, from registration to online publication within the hour: status quaestionis Portable Light Dome project for cuneiform documents status: Published online