Digitising the Napoleonic map of Egypt. The creation and publication of an open data set for the reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian landscape

Abstract

The Carte topographique de l’Égypte, published in 1828 by the French engineer Pierre Jacotin,
has always been considered a significant means for the reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian
landscape. This cartographic series can be used as an informative bridge linking the present and the
past, in the effort to understand the many changes that have determined the Egyptian landscape over
the centuries. The production of digital geographical data from historical sources with the help of GIS
(Geographic Information Systems) methodologies has been a goal of the Laboratorio di Archeologia
Digitale (LAD) of Sapienza University of Rome for several years now. This paper presents the first
significant results of the digitisation and analysis of the 47 plates of the Napoleonic Map of Egypt edited
in the first years of the 19
th Century, carried out by the LAD team and published online as open data.