Digitising the Saqqara Sacred Animal Necropolis object cards

Digitising the Saqqara Sacred Animal Necropolis object cards

The Egypt Exploration Society excavated an area of North Saqqara known as the Sacred Animal Necropolis (due to the millions of animal mummies discovered there) from 1964-71. During the total of six excavation seasons, thousands of artefacts were excavated, many of which were recorded on a slip of paper, called an object card. The EES archive holds over 3000 object cards from the Sacred Animal Necropolis excavations.

EES interns Elizabeth Owen (left) and Yu Zhuang (right) scanning the EES Saqqara Sacred Animal Necropolis object cards.

In January 2023, thanks to a generous donation from EES member Peter Phillips, the EES was able to employ two interns - UCL postgraduate students Elizabeth Owen and Yu Zhuang - to undertake the enormous task of scanning these object cards. We are very pleased to announce that all the scanned files (totalling 3767!) have been uploaded to the Society's Flickr page to be browsed by researchers, museum professionals, and the general public, alike.

You can read more about the digitisation project, the object cards, and the Sacred Animal Necropolis in Elizabeth's Collection Highlight 'Digitising the archive'.

The object cards from the Sacred Animal Necropolis (as well as from other EES excavations) can be viewed on the Society's Flickr page.

If you would like to support work in the Society's Collections, like Peter, then please consider donating to the EES Collections Fund. We depend on your generosity and donations of any size are gratefully received.