|
|
|
Ancient Egypt Magazine Volume Four Issue Six -- June/July 2004 Netfishing ANCIENT EGYPT explores the WORLD WIDE WEB ... – Your first cast into the information super-highway. "Net Fishing" appeared in the first issue of ANCIENT EGYPT. New "Net Fishing" Editor Victor Blunden takes a step back, to see how, four years on, the World Wide Web now reflects Egyptology. You have just connected to the Internet, typed in "Egypt" and entered "search". You come up with thousands of entries! What on earth do you do next? The natural impulse is to click on the first title, have a look at that, and then move on to the next, then the next, and so on, through a seemingly endless list of sites devoted to "Egypt" (the subject of your search), but you soon give up after the first ten or so as hardly any of them actually seem to give you the information you are really looking for. It’s at this point you begin to wonder if the Internet is really all it’s cracked up to be and wouldn’t it be better to have a look at those big dusty things on the shelf called "books". You have encountered the dilemma that faces all researchers – "information is only of use if you can actually find it when it is needed"! The "search engine" doesn’t actually look for "articles about Egypt" (as you may have thought it did) but rather simply picks up on the word "Egypt" in the title or text of a web-page. You are, therefore, presented with a limitless number of sites containing the word "Egypt", a high proportion of which have nothing what so ever to do with the study of the ancient civilization along the Nile valley. Almost a decade ago when the Internet was "the very latest thing" you would only have found some 136 Egyptology sites listed on the web (my search in June 1995), but now the Internet has grown of age and is used by millions of people throughout the world. Type in the word "Egypt" now and you will be presented with literally tens of thousands of Internet sites, some good, some bad and a few actually useful! What you need to do is refine your search methods or "surf the web" in a more constructive manner. One of the best ways to do this is to find a useful, informative, site and then stick with it. Add it to your "favourites" list (so you can find it again!) and then follow the "links" it presents you with so you can visit other useful and interesting sites. A good web-site will rarely direct you to poor quality web locations but will instead take you on a tour of what is interesting and informative – showing you just what the web has to offer at its best. Clicking from link to link, on a good site, you should soon find yourself "surfing the web" in a far more constructive, informative and enjoyable way. So how do you find these really useful sites ? Well that is the purpose of these pages, to offer up to you what is really good on the web to save you the trouble of having to spend hours hunting them down yourself. One of the earliest exponents of the use of the Internet for Egyptological research was Dr. Nigel Strudwick, of Cambridge University, whose website led the way in providing access to the growing array of information about Egypt being presented on the web. The opening page with its wonderful picture of life in a scribal office of the New Kingdom was an eye opener to many who first surfed the web back in the ’90s – giving a foretaste of what was to come as the Internet developed in the 21st Century. The site has been updated many times but is still there, at http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/index.html and remains one of the most useful starting points for anyone interesting in Egyptology on the web today. Other sites will be discussed over the coming months but useful "jumping off points" for the beginner are given below. Follow their "links pages" and enjoy your discovery of ancient Egypt on the Web: The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism’s official website: http://touregypt.net/index.htm Greg Reeder’s Egyptology Pages: http://www.egyptology.com/reeder/ Guardian’s Homepage: http://www.guardians.net/egypt/ The Theban Mapping Project: http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/ Back to Ancient Egypt Magazine - Volume 4 Issue 6 contents
|
|
Return to Home
with questions or comments about Ancient Egypt Magazine. or for sales, subscriptions, back numbers and advertising |
e-
mail to: