Newsletter #1, August 10, 2000     

Now that the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, I am happy to say that the Bassatine Mapping Project has been a success! We were able to accomplish our goal of creating a digital map and spreadsheet of all existing graves in the Bassatine Cemetery.  We  recorded almost 4,000 graves!!! Below is a quick summary of how we documented the worlds second oldest Jewish cemetery.

I arrived in Egypt in late May and began preparations for the Bassatine mapping project. The first order of business was to create a 1:1000 scale map of the cemetery walls. With the help of Wafik Nosser, an Egyptian volunteer engineer, we began the grueling process of trial and error. Using a 50 meter measuring tape and a compass, we were able to create a fairly accurate representation of the enclosing wall. Next we located the main landmarks inside the wall including tombs, roads, entrances and recorded them all on our digital map. We then divided the cemetery into a grid of 100 meter sections running North to South and East to West. Each section was given a letter, A-P. If you would like to see a copy of the map, click here.

At this point, in mid June, the volunteers began to arrive and the real grunt work commenced. The crew consisted of Jack Rosen, Jenny Schulder, Erin Coryell, Anthony Zamlich, Rachelle Mokofsky and myself, Aaron Kiviat. We would rise early before the heat would break 100F and head out to the city of the dead in taxis. There, we broke up into teams of twos and spread out in search of legible graves.

We tackled the graveyard section by section, starting in A and moving South. We had made the decision to only locate graves that were still legible, leaving the unmarked graves for another project (this would take much more time and expertise than we had). First, we would locate a grave by measuring its distance from two or three landmarks already on the map. Second, we would record the name and dates on the tombstone for our excel database. Third, we would photograph the tombstone with a digital camera. Click here to see some examples of our digital photos. Finally, we would paint an identification number on the side of the grave, i.e. A1,A2,A3…..

As of now, August 10 2000 we have successfully mapped all sections of the graveyard and have found thousands of legible graves (nearly 4,000) and have organized them both alphabetically and numerically on an Excel database in order to facilitate the location of graves by the descendants of Egyptian Jewry and genealogists worldwide. 

It has not been easy, to say the least. Every day has been a challenge, but the dedicated volunteers have made this project a success, and a lot of fun!

Jewish Teens Volunteer in Egypt

Upon hearing about this project we knew that we were in for an adventure. We had just met at the Kiviat’s Passover dinner and the idea sounded great.

When we first got here, we didn’t know what to expect. All we knew was that Cairo was a “hectic, chaotic” city. Our parents warned us to look out for each other and watch our backs. Once we arrived, however, Aaron made us feel at home, informing us not to worry, McDonalds was right around the corner. We bonded with other foreigners over “football” (aka soccer) , rooting for France in the Euro 2000 finals.

The project, of course was our main focus and gave us a feeling of great satisfaction —our hard work has paid off and made those in the community really happy that we were there to help.

Now, after being here for a month we have certainly worked hard and gotten to know the city. Everyone wants to know when we will be coming back to help again. Although we don’t know exactly when, we are both sure that we our paths will lead back to Cairo one day.

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