Saturday 16 July 2011

Hatshepsut Project Museum Database - Example

The Petrie Museum example is now completed. So far 70 items have been listed. As the database will not be visible publicly for a while, i wish to share a single entry (below) which will be the format of all items listed on the database:



Museum: Petrie Museum, London, England
Item/ Acquisition Number: UC14351
Object: Statuette (Djehuty)
Type: Seated
Material: Limestone
Link to Hatshepsut: Djehuty, Cartouches of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III
Origination:
Findspot: Deir el Bahri
Discovery Details:
Acquisition Details: “Acquired by Flinders Petrie”
Acquisition Date: 1887
Photograph:  Permissions not yet obtained


The finished database will have hyperlinks on the following fields:

  • Museum
  • Item/Acquisition Number
  • Photograph
Any gaps which appear, as with in the above example- where we have "origination"  left blank will be down to me having no knowledge on this information. ALL gaps will be filled in should that information become available to me through my own research or by leads and information provided by those who can help (the database will be made publicly available as read only and obviously will be free of charge to use as a research tool and information gathering excercise available to EVERYONE). I will be the only person who will have the "EDIT" option, unless i obtain help (which is highly likely if Wikipedia is to be the platform).

Please add any comments you wish to share with me. The previous comment by Tim was very useful and gave me the motivation to redesign and complete the above template and to complete (for now) the data entry involved in the Petrie Museum section of the database. I will now add the above template to the next few museums and see how it looks.

Regards,
Stuart

2 comments:

Timothy Reid said...

Hi Stuart

I like your template very much with the Petrie museum being a fitting institution to test for your interesting project, though Stuart you may well be an old man by the time you finish The Hatshepsut Project.:)

Just a thought Hatshepsut is probably the hardest king to follow as I am sure you will probably be confronted by artifacts and monuments for Thutmosis III, during their dual reign but harder as which monuments inscribed for Thutmosis III but technically fall during or are relevant to Hatshepsut's reign? Those monuments coming from the nearly 2 decades that Thutmosis III sat in the wings of his stepmother.

I myself will of course keep my eye open to contribute to your project and will look differently at those early monuments belonging to Thutmosis III and how they may relate to the daughter of Amun Re.

My suggestion is the consideration of each monument might be given a colour code to determine year of her reign or period so that as much as possible your database proceeds chronologically without chopping up museum collections.

Peace

Timothy

Stuart Tyler said...

Hi Tim,

The blog and its subsequent spin-offs is planned to be a lifetime's work- so, yes i will most definitely be an old man if i ever get to completion stage!

I agree that the database should be designed to show as much background as is possible. The colour scheme is a great idea. Filters can also be used (I have already tested this and it seems to be a worthwhile tool), but i would like to include information which shows the reader an idea of which momuments belong to which period.

One issue is that many artifacts cannnot be dated- but certainly datable artifacts should be labelled clearly. At this early stage a huge amount of research is needed to be able to date items, so all help will be gratefully received.

The start-up database (stage 1) was the template, next up is the data input, followed by the fun part (dating, etc). Lastly will be links/ references, photographs and tidying up. Then i need to choose my platform- WIKI? PDF? Website?

All of the above is subject to change, but i needed to have a basic plan. I will consider ALL opinions and comments, so keep 'em coming!

One quick note: I had NO idea how much work needed to be done when starting up the HatshepsutProject. After a year of just "scratching at the surface" I have an idea of the amount of work ahead of me. It is both daunting and exciting. I truely believe i will never get past the Thutmoside era of AE, maybe not even Hatshepsut!!. Let's prey i put all acquired knowledge to good use.

Thanks for the comments,
Stuart