The survey team will present a general introduction to the site of Gebel el Silsila and the most recent findings from the 2013 spring and autumn seasons. John Ward will present a general overview of the topographic work and discuss the various extraction techniques and methods used by the ancients at Gebel el Silsila. Maria Nilsson will present a visual journey through the pictorial landscape of the site, starting with the oldest rock art sites, i.e. Epipalaeolithic depictions, through Predynastic illustrations, Dynastic graffiti and end with an exploration into some complex Graeco-Roman quarry mark systems. Adrienn Almásy will present an overview of the textual inscriptions as documented so far. She will focus on the Greek and demotic inscriptions and discuss style, contents and prosopography.
Following the disputation on her doctoral thesis on Hellenistic Queen Arsinoë II's crown (iconographic study) at Gothenburg University in 2010 Maria Nilsson now focuses her research on the relatively new topic "pseudo script", primarily Ptolemaic and Roman quarry marks in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt. In 2012 Maria was rewarded a post doctoral fellowship at Lund University, founded by the Swedish Research Council, with the project: ‘Pseudo script in Gebel el Silsila, a query into quarry marks, characters, codes and magic’. The same year she became the mission director for the Gebel el Silsila Survey Project with an international team aiming to document all archaeological records visible on the surface.