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SunoikisisDC Summer 2021 Session 14
Thursday July 15, 17:15-18:45 CEST
Convenors: Rita Lucarelli (University of California, Berkeley) and Franziska Naether (University of Leipzig)
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/w8td3UJdGmA
The material and written culture of ancient Egypt constitutes one of the best preserved and most robust archaeological corpora to survive from antiquity, as well as one of the most popular avenues for public engagement with the Humanities. Digital initiatives and techniques, especially 3D visualizations, have become crucial for the conservation, documentation, and dissemination of ancient Egyptian material and texts to the broadest possible audience. This class will introduce the students to the Book of the Dead in 3D project, aiming at building a database of annotated 3D models of ancient Egyptian coffins. In the first part of the class, we will explore the technological and intellectual challenges of combining multiple types of data in the realization of the models and their annotations.
In the second part of the class, we will focus on a case-study: the Late Period inner sarcophagus of the “chief physician” and “overseer of the Temehu (Libyan mercenaries)” Psamtek, found in 1900 in Psamtek’s tomb south of the Unas pyramid at Saqqara, which is now on public display in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California (PAHMA 5-522). Like many museum objects, its modern display cannot adequately replicate aspects of its original archaeological context — in a deep rock-cut shaft, nestled among hundreds of impressive elite tombs at the necropolis. We will look in detail to the 3D annotated model of this coffin and, in order to virtually re-place the sarcophagus in its original context, how a joint team from the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz, is developing a dynamic VR-headset experience that combines a 3D reconstruction model of Saqqara with a photogrammetric model of the sarcophagus. Finally, we will look at a demo of the VR headset application (under development) that we are developing to “experience” the coffin in its original burial setting.
2016 “Images of Eternity in 3D. The Visualization of Ancient Egyptian Coffins through Photogrammetry.” In Monica Berti and Franziska Naether (eds.), Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age: Egyptology, Papyrology and Beyond; Proceedings of a Conference and Workshop in Leipzig, November 4-6. Leipzig, Beitrag 24, open access available here (QUCOSA): https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-201685
Lucarelli, Rita. “Ancient Egyptian Magical Spells in 3D and the Materiality of the Book of the Dead.” In Emily Cole and Alice Mandell (eds.) Materiality of Communication [Special Issue], MAARAV, A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 23, no. 1, 2019, pp. 137-150
Sullivan, Elaine, Angel D. Nieves, and Lisa M. Snyder. “Making the Model: Scholarship and Rhetoric in 3D Historical Reconstructions.” In Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, edited by Sayers, Jentry. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
The Book of the Dead in 3D: https://3dcoffins.berkeley.edu
Look at the annotated 3D model of the sarcophagus of Psamtek (https://3dcoffins.berkeley.edu/coffins/pahma-5-522) and write down in one paragraph what you think it is the most important information that the annotations on the model provide.