Cairo Museum

Wafaa El-Seddik, director-general of the Egyptian Museum, sees the exhibition as a celebration of Japan's distinguished activity in Egypt and of all the people who have worked within the framework of the partnership between Waseda, the SCA and the Egyptian Museum to bring the opportunity to view these examples of the art and culture of ancient Egypt.

The exhibition planners have arranged it as an open book of ancient Egyptian history, displaying artefacts from the Paleolithic era right through the Late Roman Period.

"The pieces exhibited are a portion of the special exhibition now touring Japan to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Waseda University Egyptian expedition," Yoshimura said. Since its first opening in 2006 the exhibition in Japan has attracted 1,300,000 visitors, which reflects a growing Japanese interesting in the ancient Egyptian civilisation.

Over these four decades, Yoshimura said, the Japanese missions in Malkata, Dahshour and elsewhere had made a number of important discoveries despite being told in 1966 that they were having beginners' luck. Ten years later, Yoshimura introduced a method that applied modern technology to archaeology. This was the use of geophysical sensing instruments to resolve Earth's physical elements, and there are dozens of ways of doing it. "We used five of the methods and actually tried and tested them in Egypt," Yoshimura said. They found the electromagnetic wave method was particularly useful and its results helped the team achieve recognition. Yoshimura went on to explain: "The area we excavated at Abusir, for example, was found by an underground radar system using the electromagnetic wave method. Dahshour north was also another field where we implemented this new method, which revealed the first subterranean archaeological remains found by analysis of satellite images. This was implemented in collaboration with Tokai University."

Electromagnetic ground radar also found the pit of Khufu's second solar boat on the Giza Plateau. However, work in the Valley of the Kings was suspended before the underground radar system could fully prove its capability in the survey owing to restoration being carried out at the tomb of Amenhotep III.

"We hope to keep contributing to the progress of modern technology by continuing excavation and restoration," Yoshimura said.

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