The cross-disciplinary research project aimed to draft a reconstruction of ancient Nubia through the study of the Bankes Archive. For this purpose, a historical geographic information system (HGIS) is used to structure and present on a digital, multi-layered map information extracted from the Bankes’ documents, such as locations, relations, systems and interactions of the human communities. GIS is an excellent instrument to manage through digital maps what are conventionally named “geographical data” (positions, connections, interactions, paths) and “non-geographical data” (dates, frequency, events, goods traded, etc.).

William J. Bankes travelled in Egypt in the years 1815-1819 and then hired a number of artists to record almost all then-known archaeo­logical sites in Egypt and Nubia until 1822. Artists in his service produced an impressive amount of diaries, accounts, letters, maps, drawings, plans and landscape watercolours that are still unpublished. In the last two hundred years, many geo-human factors caused radical changes in these areas. In a landscape almost untouched for centuries, the signs of the interactions between the ancient Nubian human communities and the natural environment were much clearer in Bankes’ times than now.

The project was funded by the Dahlem Research School POINT Fellowship Program 2014-2016, Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin, and was based at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut (Historical Geography of the Ancient Mediterranean). PI of the project was Dr Daniele Salvoldi, advised by Prof Dr Klaus Geus. Database development by Rainer Streng.

Images of the original documents are by kind permission of The National Trust and the Dorset History Centre, Dorchester, UK.

Contact [hgisnubia@gmail.com] to get more information about the project