CSUSB @ Wadi el-Hudi

Dr. Kate Liszka led five CSUSB students -- Marmar Zakher, Jessica Howe, Maia Matheu, Evelyn Hildebrand. and Christopher Brito –-to Egypt to work on an archaeological expedition at Wadi el-Hudi in Winter 2019. During this study abroad, students worked on the archaeological expedition helping to make 3D models of 11 archaeological sites. They also travelled all over Egypt seeing dozens of other archaeological sites, trying new foods, and experience modern Egyptian culture. 

Members of the Wadi el-Hudi expedition lived in Aswan and commuted into the Eastern Desert daily. Over the month, they took over 146,000 photos by attaching multiple cameras to poles to take dozens of pictures of every part of the archaeological sites from every angle. These photos are then put into a photogrammetric program called Agisoft Photoscan to create 3D models. Over the next few months, the Wadi el-Hudi team hopes to make some of these models available on their website, www.wadielhudi.com . Additionally, these 3D models can be turned into accurate 2D maps, which they will publish in their academic volume, An Atlas of Wadi el-Hudi. 

In addition to creating the 3D models, the Expedition also discovered two new archaeological sites, and visited two other sites for the very first time. Site 13 was particularly impressive, having a perimeter of over 1.7 kilometers and being an enormous rock out crop filled with housing units in its natural cave-like crevices. The team determined that it was an Islamic gold processing settlement in Egypt. 

CSUSB students also travelled all over Egypt, visiting the Giza Pyramids, Abydos, Aswan, Edfu, and especially Luxor. In Luxor, they toured the Valley of the Kings, Karnak Temple, Hatshepsut’s Temple at Deir el-Bahri and many other places. Plus they got class credit for all of their work, travel, and cultural adventures. It was a once in a life time experience for them. Hopefully, Dr. Liszka will be able to take more students to Egypt in the coming years