# Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom. Supplementary material to the database. Study photographs of inscriptions in Theban Tomb TT 231 ## Abstract The database “Persons and Names of the Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom” (PNM) is developed as part of the projects “Umformung und Variabilität im Korpus altägyptischer Personennamen 2055–1550 v. Chr.” and “Altägyptische Titel in amtlichen und familiären Kontexten, 2055-1352 v. Chr.” at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The database includes data on Egyptian Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom personal names, people, written sources, titles, and dossiers of persons attested in various sources. The online version of the database is currently accessible under https://pnm.uni-mainz.de/info and the dataset is made available under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1411391 Supplementary material collected during work on the database is made available online as an open digital archive associated with the database. It should not be considered as a publication of the respective archaeological structures and objects or their inscriptions. The photographs have been taken solely for the purpose of reading the inscriptions and are of a non-professional quality. The author would be happy if they could be of any help to colleagues preparing the publications of the respective archaeological structures and objects, and they are free to make any use of these open data (see below). The first batch of supplementary material for the database contains study photographs of inscriptions in ten 18th Dynasty Theban tombs, taken during a photographic survey conducted by Alexander Ilin-Tomich from 29 November to 4 December 2023. The following tombs were visited: TT 22, 62, 140, 164, 182, 204, 228, 231, 234, 239. This repository contains photographic documentation of tomb TT 231. ## Technical description and file names Photographs were taken using two cameras: * Sony α7 III (ILCE-7M3), fitted with the Sony FE 20mm 1.8 G lens. Colour images made with this camera are marked with “VIS” in the file name. * Sony α6000 (ILCE-6000), modified by removing the built-in infrared and ultraviolet cut filter; fitted with the Samyang AF 24mm F2.8 lens and the Heliopan 5850 850nm IR longpass filter (using Schott RG 850 filter glass). Black-and-white images taken with this camera in the near infrared spectrum are marked with “IR” in the file name. Inscriptions were illuminated using battery powered LED continuous output lights. In the visible spectrum — two 28-watt Neewer 280 LED panels, set at 5100 K. In the near infrared spectrum — two 5-watt 940 nm LED panels and occasionally one self-made 1000–1050 nm light and a 940 nm LED torch. In order to capture the visible-induced infrared luminescence (VIL) of Egyptian blue, the sunlight was blocked with a black cloth, the inscriptions were illuminated with white LED panels (Neewer 280) and photographed with the infrared-enabled camera and the Heliopan 5850 850nm IR longpass filter. Such images are labelled with VIL in the file name. The naming of files follows the numbering of tomb scenes in Porter and Moss, Topographical bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs, and paintings I: The Theban necropolis. Part 1: Private tombs, 2nd revised ed. (Oxford 1960). The RAW versions of photographs taken in tombs were processed in Adobe Camera Raw 16.1 to produce TIFF files, archived in this repository. Lens profile corrections were applied to all photographs. Colour photographs were shot with automatic white balance settings, their exposition was improved using linear tone curves. Colour photographs were saved as 8-bit RGB TIFF files using the colour profile "Adobe RGB (1998)”, embedded in TIFF tiles. Infrared photographs were converted to greyscale and their contrast was improved using parametric tone curves for best readability. Infrared photographs were saved as 8-bit greyscale TIFF files using the colour profile "Gray Gamma 2.2”, embedded in TIFF tiles. Unprocessed RAW files cannot be shared publicly because some of them contain depictions of people. They are archived at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and can be obtained by request from Alexander Ilin-Tomich < ailintom@uni-mainz.de >. ## How to use this repository The repository contains photographs saved in the baseline TIFF 6.0 format. This format is considered safe for long-term archiving of raster images. However, due to the large size of the individual files, for practical reasons the same set of photographs is also provided in the JPEG format in full and reduced resolution (the latter reduced to 1920 pixels on the long side), which allows browsing through the photographs without downloading many gigabytes of files. These JPEG files are provided packed in ZIP archives. Hence, it is suggested that users who do not need large TIFF files download either the archive “__TT ###_JPEG_low_res.zip” or “__TT ###_JPEG_high_res.zip” at the top of the file list, which contain the same sets of photographs as the main repository, but in reduced quality for smaller download size. ## Acknowledgments I am much obliged to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt for the permission to conduct a survey within the framework of my database project, and particularly to Dr. Nashwa Gaber, Dr. Fathy Yaseen, Dr. Bahaa al-Din Abd el-Gaber Badawy, and inspector Mahmoud Elazab. I owe many thanks to rais Abdelhamid Osman Taia Daramalli and to Mohamed Osman Taia Daramalli, who helped me a lot in accessing and photographing the tombs. Many colleagues have helped me in word and deed in the preparation of this survey. While I risk having omitted someone, I would like to express my utter gratitude to Susanne Bickel, Alexis Den Doncker, Khaled Hassan, Julianna Paksi, Elina Paulin-Grothe, Wael Sherbiny, and JJ Shirley. I particularly profited from the kind advice on infrared photography provided by Marco Repole, Antonio José Gómez Laguna, and Juan Ángel Ruiz Sabina. I also owe special thanks to Zoltán Fábián for the kind permission to include TT 204, located (originally unbeknown to me) within his concession. I am thankful to the German Archaeological Institute (Dietrich Raue and Kathrin Gabler) and the Austrian Archaeological Institute (Irene Forstner-Müller) for providing me the abode during my research trip to Egypt.  The funding was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. ## Licence Photographs and text by Alexander Ilin-Tomich. All photographs and text data this repository can be freely reused under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal licence ( https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ). No further permission from Alexander Ilin-Tomich is required to use these materials in any way. ## Tomb TT 231 Coordinates: 25° 44′ 12.25″ N, 32° 37′ 18.22″ E (25.736735 N, 32.621727 E) The necropolis of Dra Abu el-Naga. This tomb has apparently been used as a utility room in recent times. The original painted decoration is almost completely destroyed, with small parts of the kheker frieze surviving at the top of the side walls of the passage. In the hall, to the right of the entrance, an originally painted stela with a relief has survived. The hieroglyphs of the upper register were originally filled with Egyptian blue.