The work has included the great temple at Medinet Habu, the Bubastite Portal and Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, the temple of Ramesses III at Karnak and the first two courts of theTemple of Khonsu at Karnak. The Survey finished work in the Colonnade Hall of the Luxor Temple in 1994 and is beginning documentation of the Eighteenth Dynasty chapel at Medinet Habu. The publications of The Epigraphic Survey serve as basic research materials for historians and philologists and as a permanent record of rapidly eroding temple decoration. The hallmark of this procedure continues to be the systematic checking of the artistic rendering against the original by a team of epigraphers and artists. The surface of the monument is photographed.
Great care is taken to avoid any distortion during photography.
The photo is then printed on paper coated with a heavy gelatine emulsion. The hieroglyphs and decoration shown on the photograph are traced in pencil and then inked by an artist. The photographic image is bleached away, leaving a preliminary line drawing of the wall's surface. Two blueprints of the inked drawings are made. One of these blueprints is cut into small pieces.