Egypt's cultural heritage accumulated over thousands of years is what gives Egypt its identity and prestige. However, only a small proportion of these cultural treasures are visible to the modern world, and major milestones in human heritage are still hidden underwater, or are inaccessible to human exploration. Preservation of these concealed treasures using state-of-the-art methods in 3D digital capture and interactive visualisation will move them "into the laboratory", allowing a larger number of scientists and students from a variety of disciplines to be involved in innovative scientific exploration. This will lead to more discoveries and global awareness of human heritage that can be transferred to future generations.

This project builds on existing collaboration between The University of Nottingham, Ain Shams and Alexandria University, Egypt. We use virtual reality technology to develop a virtual campus to provide online access to 3D visualisations of Egyptian cultural heritage sites. The Newton Links project extends the partnership to include specialist expertise in underwater archaeological recording. The biggest challenges in this type of cultural heritage preservation are accurate data capture and reduction of large amounts of data into manageable format for online visualisation and interactive exploration.

Through collaborative research, we expect this project to enhance the capability in the Egyptian partner sites for the 3D capture of a range of maritime sites for use in higher education archaeology teaching and research.