Tuesday 21 December 2010

Author's Note

I have been busy recently, with the knowledge that we are approaching a family orientated time in the calendar year. I have now been able to add a number of Museums and Sites to the new page (discussed in a previous post). I plan to add links, but this will not be any time soon.

The items page is a headache. I just cannot decide how to go about presenting my/ our findings. In a way, there's enough information available to create a website. That requires time and lots of it. It also means that I would be running a blog as well as a stand- alone website. With full time work and a family i enjoy the company of- i have a predicament. Just to highlight things- the British Museum alone has enough to keep me busy for approximately 6 months to a year. Approximately 150 items or so!! Then there's the Met Museum- with its own room dedicated to Hatshepsut.

That brings me the the whole concept of presentation. In order to satisfy my own agenda, but also the collective agendas of the blogs visitors, I will have plan very carefully. I aim to be unique. Whereas the heavy use of materials used from other peoples work is essential to me (links, photos and even theories), i need to be able to say that no-one else offers the same as the Hatshepsut Project. There are sites which dedicate themselves to Hatshepsut (top of the list always being Maat-Ka-Ra-Hatshepsut). This blog will compliment those sites, or at least- i hope it will.

In 6 months time i will have over 100 posts and if i am not careful, i will be swimming in information without the capacity to be able to take any of it in..

I am completely open to ideas and suggestions. Feel free to contact me at any time.

One of my eventual goals will be to try as much as possible to estimate where blocks originated from. In this i have already found that support is available. I am currently on a "test run" where i have been in contact with someone who is working "in the field". When they have time available and when i can report on this in detail, this will be a precursor for other mini Hatshepsut Project investigations. For those who may be new to the blog- i am not an Egyptologist, nor am i qualified in the areas necessary to be able to form theories which will change the way we think about Hatshepsut. Rather, i am using the resources available to me to show that with enough help- anything is possible.

If i am able to correctly assign just one block to the correct area and have my findings confirmed by someone who is "in the field" then i will have enough motivation to move from blocks to statues- and so on.

I will provide updates like this whenever possible. I would like to be as open to you all as possible, so if you have any questions, let me know. I may even use them on a new stand-alone page.

Best Wishes,
Stuart

4 comments:

Anneke said...

Have you thought about setting up a Wikiversity Project? Or a text at Wiki Books?
Those formats allow you to create a database of all the information you wish to collect. It will be open to others for editing but that may not be a bad thing.
Trying to collect data about all museum objects related to Hatshepsut is interesting and fun, but I wonder if the Blog is the best format for that? The Blog would be a great way to highlight some idea and / or items while keeping the database in another format. Just my 2 cents :) Feel free to ignore me

Anneke

Anneke said...

I put up something for you at:
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Hatshepsut_Project

The museum objects is a subpage.
Let me know what you think.

Anneke

Stuart Tyler said...

I have never ignored your advise Anneke (which i have found to be a wise decision) and i feel that you may have found the solution. I completely agree that the blog is great in highlighting museums and sites, but something like Wiki would be the ideal platform for me (and others)to show all individual items. Give me a few days and i will get back to you.

I love what you have set up already. I believe i will have the time to run both the blog and a Wiki page. Due to the fact others would be able to contribute- it could very well end up being a community project. That is an idea I would love to push through. The more the merrier... Thank you, again,

Stuart

Anneke said...

I'm glad you like it. It is really fascinating to see how far and wide the artifacts have spread.

The blog may be a great way to highlight some images where posting them on wikiversity would be a problem wrt copyright. Sometimes fair use might cover a blog, but not a website like wikimedia commons which hosts the images.

Anneke