Databank of Eastern European Egyptology: The project and its prospects

Since 1997, the Center for Egyptological Studies (CES) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) participates in the project The Databank of Eastern-European Egyptology, which is initiated by the Gnosarch Foundation (Switzerland). The aim of this project is analyzing and cataloguing of Egyptian antiquities kept in the Museum of the former USSR, ARE and in some European collections. The project is based on the computer program Text and Context, which is being developed since 1988. It represents the new form of a catalogue, allowing not only to describe an object on a high scientific level but also to perform a detailed analysis of a monument in comparison with other sources. The participants of the project are the Basel Museum of Cultures (Switzerland), the Egyptian Museum of Turin (Italy) and the Institute of Egyptology and Coptology of the Munster University (Germany). The work of the CES/RAS enriched the Databank with new data of interesting Egyptian collections of the former USSR, yet still unkown in the Western countries, like those from the Museum of Voronezh, Kazan, Kiev, Odessa, and others. In the nearest future the system will also include the monuments kept in Ukraine (Dnepropetrovsk, Khersones), Latvia (Riga), Lithuania (Vilnus, Kaunas) and Estonia (Tallin, Tartu). At this moment the Databank contains information for more than 10,000 monuments kept in different collections of the world and it claims to be a unique manual on all branches of Ancient Egyptian history and culture. It is a non-commercial program, which is applied between its participants. We also plan to publish the Databank in Internet form, and thus permit to thousands of Egyptologists to get its information in one place, without additional expenses of time and money.