Wadi Naqqat (Eastern Desert, Egypt): Anchor Dataset for FAIR Assessment of Coptic Monastic Heritage

This dataset on the monastic settlement at Wadi Naqqat, located in Egypt’s Eastern Desert and dating to the 4th–6th centuries AD, is an exported subset of the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) database, developed in collaboration with the Coptic Monastic Heritage Archive (CMHA) at the University of Ljubljana. It is based on an analysis of open-access satellite imagery and a cultural heritage survey of 14 heritage places conducted in 2018–2019 as part of the project “Endangered Hermitages: Documenting Coptic Monastic Heritage in Middle Egypt and the Eastern Desert”, funded by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). The CMHA, in its cultural heritage data management component, functions as a third-party project of EAMENA that provides a framework and open access to endangered cultural heritage across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The publication of a portion of the CMHA’s data, including ground truth assessments and high-definition photographic archives, demonstrates how an Arches-powered information platform like EAMENA can effectively manage diverse cultural heritage data. This ranges from remote sensing to on-the-field evaluations, thereby making this data interoperable despite its scale and method of assessment. The current dataset on the monastic settlement in Wadi Naqqat aims to provide a standardized FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) assessment method along with structured publication and support for the reusability of Coptic monastic heritage data. This dataset shows that the EAMENA methodology, often used for a systematic remote sensing survey, is also effective for medium- to small-scale projects involving ground-based assessments and photographic documentation.