Andrews University (Berrien Springs, MI) epigraphist-archaeologist works at Luxor (Thebes) Project 2021

 from ANDREWS dot-edu "News" website article on "HITTITE TREATY"

L.S. Baker Jr., PhD, associate director of Andrews University Press, was part of a field project in December to Luxor. The site, known to the ancient world as Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, is home to the Karnak Temple Complex including the Great Hypostyle Hall. In cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, archaeologists from the University of Memphis in Tennessee and the University of Quebec in Montreal, joined recently by Mark Janzen from Louisiana Christian University and a team from Lipscomb University have been working on the Karnak Great Hypostyle Hall Project. The long-term initiative uses the latest technology to record in the highest detail the thousands of inscriptions and reliefs carved on the walls and columns of the giant complex.

Baker said that Janzen’s team is specifically tasked with accurately recording the wall reliefs relating to one pharaoh’s battle conquests of the southern Levant in the 13th century B.C. In the middle of those reliefs is the famous, and earlier, Hittite Treaty originally inscribed under Ramesses II. That treaty has been analyzed by Egyptologists for generations, since its discovery in the early 19th century, and is celebrated by historians as the oldest known peace or alliance treaty between major world superpowers. A facsimile of that treaty is prominently featured in the United Nations building in New York.

Baker was specifically assigned the section of wall containing the Hittite Treaty. He has been tasked with helping to produce, with the help of computerized photogrammetry, the most detailed renderings of each hieroglyph (character).

“Through the generations since the treaty was discovered, there have been many renderings of varying accuracy and quality,” Baker said. “These have been the basis for the standard published transliterations and translations of what the treaty says. Standard photographic techniques cannot discern some of the imprecision of the characters, because of the challenges of light and shadow and the wear and tear of time.”

According to Baker, it is unlikely that the team’s work on the Hittite Treaty will result in any serious changes in translation or new understanding of its content. “But it will be the most exact recording of the hieroglyphic inscriptions ever produced,” he said, “and probably will be the standard state-of-the art source for Egyptologists and historians for years to come.” He noted that in his work he has already found several inaccuracies, albeit minor, from previously published works.

Baker said it has been an honor to be so “up close and personal” with such a famous element of historical understanding. “So there I am, 15 feet up on a scaffold, working just inches away from the delicate and faded lines of this incredibly important inscription from ages past. I guess it might be like an art historian from Andrews being nose to nose with the Mona Lisa in the Louvre to analyze and record the brush strokes on Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting.”