Excavation needs records because digging destroys. Inscriptions need records for a different reason: they are slowly destroyed anyway, by salt, groundwater, wind, tourism and old damage. Epigraphy is the careful copying and publishing of inscriptions and reliefs so that the record outlasts the wall.
Key idea
An epigrapher copies an inscription exactly as it is: every sign, every crack, every damaged patch, without "improving" it. The Epigraphic Survey of the University of Chicago, founded by James Henry Breasted in 1924 and based at Chicago House in Luxor, has spent a century recording temples such as Medinet Habu this way.
Why it works
A copy is used by people who will never see the wall, perhaps after the wall is gone. If the copyist fills a gap with what he expects, the reader cannot tell the guess from the evidence. If he leaves out a faint sign, the reader cannot recover it. So the rule is: draw what is there, mark what is damaged, and put restorations only in the edition, clearly marked.
The Chicago method
- A large photograph is taken of a section of wall and enlarged.
- At the wall, an artist traces the carving onto the print in pencil, checking against the stone.
- The lines are inked; then the photograph is bleached away, leaving a drawing on white paper.
- Two Egyptologists, working separately, check the drawing against the wall sign by sign (this is collation) and mark corrections.
- The artist makes the corrections, and the drawing gets a final check at the wall before publication.
Worked example: Why not just photograph it?
Cameras are cheap and exact. Why does the Epigraphic Survey still draw?
- A photograph records everything at once: carving, stains, salt crust, old paint, cracks and shadows. On a damaged wall these can hide signs or look like signs.
- A trained epigrapher, looking at the stone in different lights, can tell a chisel cut from a crack.
- The drawing records the epigrapher's judgment, checked by two others; the photograph is kept beside it as evidence.
Answer: Because light, stains and damage hide details that a trained eye, checked by collation, can recover.
Worked example: Recording damage
Half of a sign has flaked off a wall. What should the copy show?
- The surviving half, exactly as it is.
- The edge of the damaged area, drawn as damage (often by hatching).
- Not the missing half. If the sign can be identified, the edition can say so, marked as partly preserved.
Answer: What survives, and where the damage is; nothing invented.
Common mistake
Thinking a photograph is enough. Light and damage hide details that careful copying recovers. Look at any photo of a weathered wall and ask: is that a sign, or a crack?
Since the 1990s the Survey has also cleaned and conserved monuments, and its volumes are free to download. Rising groundwater, which brings salt into the stone, is one of the main threats it records against.