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 This list is designed to show Egyptology sites which focus on using the many benefits of computing and the Internet to clarify Egyptian society and Egyptian sites. This is a pretty randomly organized list, but it does contain some sites of real interest and value. Some are duplicated elsewhere.
General (sites using the Internet intelligently to display Egyptology)
Online Museums (museums with online displays - see “Institutions” for a more complete museum list, irrespective of the online presence of the museums listed)
Joining In (Online communities)
General
New: 3-D Virtual Reality Tour of West Bank tombs
http://www.osirisnet.net/3d-tours/qv66/e_qv66-tour.htm (Nefertari)
http://www.osirisnet.net/3d-tours/tt96/e_tt96-tour.htm (Sennefer)
This site offers 3-D tours of a number of tombs including the tombs of Nefertari (QV66) and Sennefer (TT96), both very different but possibly the most beautiful of the West Bank tombs. To run the tours, you will need a VRML plug-in. Details are provided on the above pages.
New: Eternal Egypt - Multimedia Section
http://www.eternalegypt.org/EternalEgyptWebsiteWeb/HomeServlet?ee_website_action_key=action.display.views&language_id=1
This section on the Eternal Egypt website uses different multimedia applications to bring Egypt to life, allowing visitors to the site to explore artefacts in 3-D, to tour different archaeological sites, and and view animations and web cams, amongst other things. Well worth spending some time to explore all the different features. This site really does try to innovate on behalf of the visitor.
Digital Egypt
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/Welcome.html
The Petrie Museum’s remarkable site, designed to reveal prehistoric and predynastic Egypt to visitors to the site. This is an excellent resource, which continues to evolve. It includes descriptions, images, computer graphics, scene reconstructions, and many images from the remarkable prehistoric Egyptian collections.
The Theban Mapping Project
http://www.thebanmappingproject.com
This is a superb site which records in detail all aspects of the Valley of the Kings sites. In their own words: “Since its inception in 1978, the Theban Mapping Project (TMP, now based at the American University in Cairo) has been working to prepare a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes”. Each site is broken down by its vital statistics and a fine collection of photographs illustrate the textual details. The site is easy to navigate and the database can be searched using an efficient search engine.
Virtual Saqqaran Mastaba at the Louvre
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/saqqara/fr/home.htm
This is a gorgeous site, even with the annoying but admittedly pretty Flash splash-page. The mastaba is presented under four headings: Mastaba, Chapel, Excavations and Finds, some with additional sub-menus. not only is this a pretty and informative site, it uses software and web technologies to really bring the mastaba alive. 3-D plans of the mastaba are accompanied by clickable rollovers which take you to specific parts of the tomb, and videos show you more virtual views of the site as it has been reconstructed in software. You will need Quicktime to see the videos.
ETANA
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/etana-abzu-news
Etana is a project in which a number of institutions are involved. In their own words: “ETANA is envisioned to include the permanent archiving, dissemination and generation of both front- and back-end stages of scholarly knowledge (such as archaeological excavation reports, editions of ancient and modern texts, core early monographs, dictionaries, journals, and reports in the public domain), a portal to ANE Web resources, an electronic commons where scholars in the field can share data and images, and eventually an electronic publishing effort for "born digital" publications. ETANA will also collect and/or develop software required for the production of the Internet site in core areas identified by the planning committees and outlined herewith. Vanderbilt's library will serve as the host technical site and grant administrator”.
One of their most useful offerings is a large body of online publications - electronic books saved in PDF format, written by people like Petrie, Quibell and many others.
EEF Guide to Internet Sources for Ancient Egyptian Texts
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/EEFtexts.html
A collection of online resources for Ancient Egyptian texts, arranged chronologically and hosted on the EEF website. This is a vast and immensely useful resource.
WbnRaMPT’s Hieroglyph Builder
www.donf.com/egypt/medu/index.htm
This is a light-hearted site which is a good place for beginners to experiment with hieroglyphs. This is one of many sites that is not yet finished but if you are familiar with transliteration then the dictionaires are good fun.
SVG GlyphWriter (prototype)
http://dhost.info/glyphwriter
An online application, which is called '(SVG) GlyphWriter'. It's an online hieroglyphic text editor. It has some very useful features . For example, it's possible to reposition hieroglyphs by dragging them, and to rotate and resize individual hieroglyphs to an exact degree. The user can add hieroglyphs through a menu, and also by means of (a basic form of) Manuel de Codage code. The entire application, and its output, is based on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG is itself based on XML. It therefore has the same advantages as XML: it's open source, it's text-based, and it's exchangable with other XML-documents. One of the biggest features in my opinion is the possibility to add extra information to the resulting image, for example translation and transliteration. Prerequisites for using SVG GlyphWriter are: Internet Explorer and the free Adobe SVG Viewer-plug-in (and an internet connection).
Online Museums
 It is great to read about sites and artefacts, but there is nothing like seeing them for ones self. This site is designed to give people access to Egypt via the web, so the only museums reviewed here are those which show some of their collections online. This is a short list, with very brief descriptions, of some excellent museum collections, some of them huge, some of them very small. If you wish to see which are best for studying Predynastic collections, please go to the Predynastic page.
These are organized first by country, starting with the UK, and then alphabetically.
UK
Bolton Museum, Manchester
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/HTML/archaeology_egyptology_ancient.asp
The Bolton Museum has a little-known but very good Egyptology collection. This link offers a description of the collection, but also use the menu bar to the left, click on Museum Collections and then Egyptology to see photographs from different periods in Ancient Egypt that are held in the collection.
British Museum, London
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/aes/aesgall.html
A gallery by gallery photographic guide to the Egyptology Collection at the BM.
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/
The British Museum has a great collection - the public spend most of their time in the two mummy galleries (which contain very beautiful mummy coffins dating to Middle and New Kingdom, Late Period, Ptolemaic and Roman periods). The Egyptian Sculpture gallery on the ground floor is superb and contains some remarkable monumental pieces aswell as the Rosetta Stone and the Abydos King List. There are also a Predynastic gallery and a Nubian gallery which are both very well worth the visit.
Petrie Museum, London
http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk/
As well as Dynastic artefacts, the Petrie has one of the best Predynastic collections on show in the world. It also has some small but fine Amarna pieces and a stunning collection of pottery. The website provides access to photographs and usually short descriptions of every single item housed in this remarkable collection. The museum is part of UCL, and is moving into custom built new premises in the next few years.
Swansea - Museum of Ancient Egyptian Antiquities
http://www.swan.ac.uk/egypt/infosheet/Collection.htm
3500 objects from a turn of the century private collection, now housed in a museum in south Wales. This site offers a background to the collection, a small number of photographs from the collection, and additional information.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/livmus/humanities/egypt.asp
A very short description of the museum's 15,000 strong Egyptology collection. The collection includes the items from John Garstang's excavations in Beni Hassan.
Egypt
Egyptian Museum, Cairo
http://www.touregypt.net/egyptmuseum/egyptian_museum.htm
The Tour Egypt's web page for the Cairo Museum contains an excellent collection of photographs, sorted chronologically, together with details about the Tutankhamun displays and the Karnak cachette
Nubia Museum
http://www.sis.gov.eg/nubia/flash/nubia.html
An extremely irritiating website built in Flash 6 which, however, provides introductory text to, and photos of, the Nubian Museum
France
The Louvre, Paris
http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm
The home page for the Louvre which has one of the finest collections of Egyptology in Europe. There is a good section describing the Egyptian collection at http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm together with a virtual tour of the museum, including the Egyptology section which can be found at http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm (the site gives details of the plug-ins that you will need to view this). Be warned - the queues for the Louvre in the real world are legendary.The superb Egyptology collection can be sampled if you have Quick Time 5, by going to the “Virtual Tours” link. There are also plenty of photographs if you follow the “Selected Works” link.
Germany
The Egyptian Museum in Berlin
http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/amp/e/s.html
Short English language section of the Museum's website
Netherlands
National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden
http://www.rmo.nl/new/home.html
In the left hand menu bar go to Presentations and then in the top horizontal nav bar click Egyptians and you will be taken to a short description of the Egyptian collection, with an option to click on five thumbnails that will take you to more information about the pictures shown.
US
Boston Museum of Fine Art
www.mfa.org (Home Page)
http://www.mfa.org/egypt/explore_ancient_egypt/index.html (Interactive Egyptology)
The MFA re-launched its website in August 2005, with enhanced functionality to encourage visitors to interact more deeply with the encyclopedic collection, exhibitions, and calendar of programs. The Egyptian collection pages (the second link) include an interactive guide to the Egyptology collections, complete with video lectures, a virtual dig, articles (don’t forget to click on the little orange arrow at the bottom of each piece of text to navigate to the next page of each article) and learning resources. This is a great resource - take a look.
A notable new feature of the re-launch is an improved and expanded Giza Pyramid Archive which contains thousands of important photos, diary pages, maps, and panoramic views of sites from the MFA/Harvard University excavations from 1902 to 1947: http://www.mfa.org/collections/index.asp?key=19.
Brooklyn Museum, New York
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
The Egyptian collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. A short highlights list provides photographs and descriptions of a small number of the artefacts in the collection.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/department.asp?dep=10
The Egyptology section of the Met features a number of articles, relevant publications, and fifty photographs of top their Egyptology pieces
Joining In
For those of us who like a closer involvement with the Egyptological community, there are a number of ways of getting a better perspective. Societies and institutions offer the opportunity to read about up to date activities, go to lectures and mix with like-minded people. Electronic Forums/Groups are communities of like-minded people who come together on the Internet in an interactive way to listen to conversations about Egypt, and join in with questions or answers.
Egyptologists Electronic Forum (EEF)
http://welcome.to/EEF
The EEF Community is a list-based group set up to discuss all matters Egyptological, Predynastic, Dynastic and post-Dynastic. It features both scholars and amateurs and is a very active and helpful group. Discussions are usually focused on academic issues, subjects of common interest to Egyptologists and those who admire Egypt, and are highly informative.
Amun Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/
Another group set up to discuss Egypt and Egyptology, with a good following. As with all groups it is important to read their rules and regulations - a sharp reminder will follow any messages that do not conform to their guidelines. Postings are usually academic in nature, and well worth monitoring.
New: The Nile Valley Forum
http://phpbb-host.com/phpbb/index.php?mforum=thenile
An informal web-based bulletin board style forum discussing Ancient Egypt under a number of topic headings. Registration is required, but it is free of charge. As with most bulletin boards, messages are organized in threads, so that you can work from the original comment/query through all the responses in chronological order on the same page.
New: Glyphdoctors
http://www.glyphdoctors.com/
This website, run by PhD candidate Nicole Hansen, went live on 1th April 2005. Although primarily concerned with learning and teaching hieroglyphs, there is an online forum for the discussion of all things Egyptological. The forums are only available by registering with the site, which is, however, free, and only asks basic information (name, email, password, city, country). Confirmation of log-in details from your nominated email address is also required.
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