Deciphering Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Towards a New Strategy for Navigation in Museums.
This work presents a novel strategy to decipher fragments of Egyptian cartouches identifying the hieroglyphs of which they are composed. A cartouche is a drawing, usually inside an oval, that encloses a group of hieroglyphs representing the name of a monarch. Aiming to identify these drawings, the proposed method is based on several techniques frequently used in computer vision and consists of three main stages: first, a picture of the cartouche is taken as input and its contour is localized. In the second stage, each hieroglyph is individually extracted and identified. Finally, the cartouche is interpreted: the sequence of the hieroglyphs is established according to a previously generated benchmark. This sequence corresponds to the name of the king. Although this method was initially conceived to deal with both high and low relief writing in stone, it can be also applied to painted hieroglyphs. This approach is not affected by variable lighting conditions, or the intensity and the completeness of the objects. This proposal has been tested on images obtained from the Abydos King List and other Egyptian monuments and archaeological excavations. The promising results give new possibilities to recognize hieroglyphs, opening a new way to decipher longer texts and inscriptions, being particularly useful in museums and Egyptian environments. Additionally, devices used for acquiring visual information from cartouches (i.e., smartphones), can be part of a navigation system for museums where users are located in indoor environments by means of the combination of WiFi Positioning Systems (WPS) and depth cameras, as unveiled at the end of the document.
Depto.de Ingeniería de Software y Sistemas Informáticos, ETSI Informática, UNED. C/Juan del Rosal, 16, 28040 Madrid, Spain. jaimeduque@amenofis.com.
Jaime
J
Duque-Domingo
Depto.de Ingeniería de Software y Sistemas Informáticos, ETSI Informática, UNED. C/Juan del Rosal, 16, 28040 Madrid, Spain. pjherrera@issi.uned.es.
Pedro Javier
PJ
Herrera
School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, Heriott-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK. e.valero@hw.ac.uk.
Enrique
E
Valero
Depto.de Ingeniería de Software y Sistemas Informáticos, ETSI Informática, UNED. C/Juan del Rosal, 16, 28040 Madrid, Spain. ccerrada@issi.uned.es.
Carlos
C
Cerrada
Egyptian hieroglyphs; edge detection; object recognition; region identification