Giza Photos from Vienna Now Online

The first 1,400 German/Austrian Expedition photos, kindly supplied by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Institut für Ägyptologie of the University of Vienna, are  now online. In 1912, Hermann Junker took over from Georg Steindorff to lead the German/Austrian Expedition to Giza. Images and discoveries from this important excavation are spread today through museums and institutes in Cairo, Vienna, Leipzig and Hildesheim. They show objects and excavations in the central strip of the Western Cemetery, and the so-called G I-South Cemetery, the row of mastabas immediately south of Khufu’s Great Pyramid, flanking his famous funerary boat and boat pits.

G 4000, Hemiunu, corridor chapel, serdab behind north niche, seated statue of Hemiunu (Hildesheim 1962) in situ, looking west

In addition to the historic dig photos, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has also supplied stunning new color photography of its Giza collections. As always on our Web site, all images and documents can be magnified for detailed study.

Standing pair statue inscribed for Kapuptah and his wife Ipep from G 4461: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna ÄS 7444

Thanks are due to Dr. Regina Hölzl, curator of the Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, and her staff for their hard work in scanning and shipping the digital images. We are also grateful to Dr. Manfred Bietak and Dr. Peter Jánosi of the University of Vienna, for their expertise and collaboration in bringing the Junker material online. In Boston, the scans were edited, and descriptive metadata was added by our Giza Research Associate Dr. Diane V. Flores. To browse the Vienna photos, simply type “AEOS” or “o_neg_nr” into the Search box. More Vienna images to come!

This marks the second collection of non-Museum of Fine Arts images and documents to join the Giza Archives online. In January 2008, just under 100 Giza objects housed in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, California, appeared online. Most of the images show new photography taken by Egyptlogy Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Minor.

Additional groups of images and documents have arrived in Boston from Berlin and Philadelphia; these are currently in preparation for posting on the Giza Web site.

Peter Der Manuelian