The Akhenaten Temple Project was the first computer project assumed by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The project was proposed in 1965 by Ray Winfield Smith, who became interested in the stones at Karnak, colloquially known as “talatat.” These specific polychrome relief-cut blocks are from the Aten Temple built by Akhenaten (reign c.1352 BCE – 1336 BCE) at Thebes/Karnak. In 1966 Ray Winfeild Smith secured sponsorship from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and along with the Department of Antiquities in Cairo and under a “generous grant of counterpart funds from the Smithsonian Institution,” he began the long and tedious project of reassembling this structure with the aid of IBM’s nascent computer technology.
Smith earned his BS from Dartmouth in 1918 and received and honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the same college in 1958. He worked in the oil industry, military, and in government service. He was a scholar and prolific collector of ancient glass and was described by the New York Times as an archaeologist by “avocation.” With the aid of IBM in Cairo, he attempted to reconstruct the temple, some of which had already been removed from the site and taken to Europe and the United States. This particular collection includes photographs of an estimated 30-45,000 decorated pieces. It is estimated that there were 100,000 stones used to make up the entire temple. During the fourteenth century BCE there was a “large scale reuse” of the blocks. Smith asserted that the stones with out decoration “were considered unimportant and were reinserted invisibly at various points during the repair and restoration work.”
The IBM computer project was abandoned in 1976. This collection spans Ray Winfield Smith’s entire involvement as director of the project 1968-1971, and begins the career of Dr. Donald B. Redford who acted as a consultant in 1971 and has been director since 1972 (and, as of 2007, still is). As of 2007, Redford is a professor of Egyptology in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State University, an expert on eighteenth Dynasty Amarna period, and an internationally renowened scholar of Ancient Egypt and Biblical Studies.
From the guide to the Akhenaten Temple Project records, 1966-1978, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)
