so we're indeed joined by Professor
Peter Manuelian who works on Egyptology
here at Harvard and among the goals for
today isn't necessarily to get you get
you to decide exactly what final
projects you're going to work on but to
seed you with the first of a series of
ideas and domains outside of CS and
outside of engineering more generally
and what's so exciting about peter's
work is that of all the faculty i know
on campus he does such an amazing job at
bringing technology to a very very very
own old field and his work in virtual
reality and restoration of artifacts
with 3d printing and beyond
it's just wonderfully inspiring and so
the goal ultimately for today is really
just that to inspire and to get folks
thinking about possible applications of
CS to this world thanks Benedict welcome
to all of you in New Haven
nice to see you down there I love this
concept of this course mixing digital
applications and the humanities I'm
basically a humanities guy there's some
social sciences in there too because of
archaeology and then of course on the
science side too with computer science
so I'm delighted to try to mix all this
stuff together so I've been running for
a long long time almost 18 years now
something called the Giza project not to
be confused with Gaza
this is Giza the Great Pyramids to the
west of modern Cairo think about 2500
BCE and this has a tremendous Harvard
legacy based on excavations by someone
named George Andrew Reisner Harvard
class of 1889 and in 1905 he brought
something together called the Harvard
MFA that stands for Museum of Fine Arts
Boston expedition and this is one of the
longest-running and most successful
expeditions ever it went for about 40
years and worked at 23 different sites
so everything you see in red and even
off the screen down into the Sudan
ancient Nubia were part of the sites
that he worked out but headquarters was
always up at Giza that was the most
important place so that's what we're
gonna focus on today and I want to just
show you a few of the ideas and
challenges and technologies and exciting
things we're working on maybe some of
these will lead to some final project
ideas for you and perhaps not we shall
see so when you're dealing with Giza
you've got all kinds of cool datasets
you've got the data set that's still out
at the site you may all know the three
famous pyramids there's no decoration
inside those those are royal tombs
for pharaohs of the fourth dynasty but
then surrounding the pyramids are
hundreds and hundreds of rectangular
structures called mastabas these are
tombs of non royal people the elites of
the pyramid age and inside many of them
you get wonderful decorations relief
carvings paintings inscriptions these
are the primary sources for anything you
want to know about ancient Egypt how
they dressed how they interacted their
craftsmanship their costumes
hieroglyphic texts and grammar and
funerary rituals how they treated
livestock what their architecture looked
like it's all there in these frozen
moments for us Egyptologist and then
there's the other data set that came
away from Giza first it was plunder then
it was responsible archeology our humf a
expedition worked from about 1905 to
1942 when George Reisner died at the
pyramids and he's actually buried in Old
Cairo so all this is the kind of stuff
that the excavators fine and they've
ended up in museums all over the world
many of them right here in Boston at the
Museum of Fine Arts and along the way
there were spectacular masterpieces as
well like this one which is in the MFA
probably one of the top five sculptures
from any period in in all of Egyptian
history so what's the raw material that
our project has been using it's this
stuff rather unromantic looking 21000
glass plate expedition photographs large
size almost letter sized paper to
mid-size to a four by five inches
drawings maps and plans architectural
sections figural drawings of wall scenes
and hieroglyphic texts and and other
decoration boxes and boxes of prints and
manuscripts and things published
articles and then unpublished stuff as
well so how do you take a massive
archive like this from an old expedition
and try to make sense out of it
because who's got the time to get a
grant to come up to Boston and open
every one of those boxes so this is our
plan this is our diagram we start in the
middle with an individual tomb called a
mastaba of a single person maybe it's a
family group maybe there's more than one
person buried there but then we round up
everything that's related to that so we
have a sequel database it's called TMS
the museum system but a romantic title
huh it's made by a company called
gallery systems in New York if you're
interested in museum studies are going
into the museum world I would suggest
that you might
get comfortable with TMS because it's
used in 700 museums around the world
so about 2,000 filled sequel database
pretty useful and all of these things
have to find their homes in the various
media modules of the of the database so
for one given tomb do a search for it
and up comes well I have this many
photographs old excavation shots modern
color photography
I've got renderings I've got manuscripts
I've got published books I have new
pictures I have architectural plans and
drawings the object register the
database of its time right where Reisner
and the team gave a sketch of every
object gave it a number measurements
where did it come from the
archaeological provenance new
photography drawings everything that is
related gets linked so we chugged along
doing this with the remnants or the
archive of the Harvard MFA expedition
for many years and then realize doesn't
do you any good if you know everything
about tomb number one right here because
it was dug by the Americans but nothing
by this about this tomb over here
because the Germans excavated it or the
Italians did so we went on the road
years ago and we rounded up all the big
players all of these cities and
institutions dug directly at Giza and
they all got stuff and so we signed
agreements with all of them then we got
them to hand over all their photos and
Diaries and maps and plans and things
and of course it never comes in in the
format that you want to go right into
your sequel database it's got to be
massaged so there's no end of data entry
we launched one website back in 2005
it's now but frozen since 2011 and then
we've just built this new one at Harvard
its Giza FAS that harvard.edu there it
is and it's a more modern and robust
website you can see the totals if you
just hit the the Go button without even
typing anything you'll get the list of
everything that's in there right now all
cross-linked and hopefully intelligently
referenced this is still a work in
progress and a lot of the cooler things
like saving collections and sharing them
with colleagues those things aren't
quite built yet and we want to get to
those we also want to put the page
viewer in called mirador the triple if'
page viewing system that was developed
between Harvard and Stanford that lets
you zoom in on images and flip through
them book like and annotate them and do
all kinds of cool stuff so there are a
lot of things that are still coming and
then we've also
into the 3d modeling section of the
world here so it's not just the old dig
photos and the discoveries but now we
want to cruise around the site fly over
it in 3d we want to dive down burial
shafts we want to restore things we get
views of tombs both above ground
chambers and underground chambers that
we wouldn't get in any other way of
course we can rotate these in this case
you see the original excavators section
drawing and plan drawing superimposed in
this studio max file right with the 3d
model so you can compare and see how
you're doing the other variable then is
avatars right bringing humans in which
is always tricky because are they
dressed appropriately are they doing the
right things do we know what this room
is for and are these guys doing the
right stuff it's a whole nother level of
complexity and rendering and then if
you're going to get it on the web it's
pretty tricky too so this is all moving
into the same kind of large repository
we believe that Giza is one of the most
important archaeological sites in the
world and it needs a center it needs an
institute if it's not a brick-and-mortar
structure then at least we can get this
website online and along the way with
reconstructions you may have played with
Assassin's Creed and things like that
and you're always wondering what's
accurate what's fantasy what's
speculation so along the way we're
trying to get away from that Wild West
concept of wandering how did that all
happen and build a system where we've
got a kind of a digital paper trail so
if that wall is this high now you know
why well it was excavated at 3 feet
we're speculating that it was originally
five feet and here's why there's a
similar building at another site that's
done the same way or it's based on this
excavation report or publication so
we're trying to bring some order into
the chaos of 3d modeling and
reconstruction why do we do this stuff
because sites like this are doomed
here's an example 1927 and today you can
see what we're beautiful engaged statues
are now hurting whether it's salts
coming to the surface and leaching away
the decoration or vandalism lopping the
faces off and bringing them to the art
market all kinds of challenges not
everyone can get to these places the
tombs are often locked or reburied or
not open for public view
so visualization is another part of the
project that we experiment with here we
are actually on top of
the corner of the Great Pyramid that's
why these guys are trying not to fall
off as they walk around right here and
this is great fun these are HTC vibes or
oculus goes and other devices I'm trying
to bring this to Harvard next semester
so people in our Science Center might be
able to have the experience of walking
around on top of the Great Pyramid and
our modeling also brings up questions of
restoration so this was originally found
as a deteriorated mess a hundred feet
underground all the wood was deathly
deteriorated insects floods all of that
but with meticulous archaeological
documentation you can then start to put
things back together so we have a 3d
reconstruction visit able in our
visualization lab in another classroom
where I teach Aggies of course and that
lets you do some cool things not only
restore the tomb that's what everything
you just saw looked like in 1925 when
the excavators got there and it turned
out to be the mother of the king who
built the Great Pyramid and here's all
her funerary bedroom set there was
however a very complicated second chair
and no one even knew what it should look
like based on this mess but we were able
to put it back together based on the
original excavation records and then the
next step was to actually build it
physically so based on a computer model
our CNC router is actually carving real
cedar wood and making the arms of that
chair
we got real gold we learned how to make
fan styles and this is now an exhibit at
the Harvard Semitic museum where I'm
fortunate to be the director - so I get
to say what goes on view and what
doesn't so mixing things from the
virtual world to the real world it's
kind of a fun exercise it's not just a
research website anymore it's a museum
exhibit piece it's a teaching tool and
we're blending the the boundaries a
little bit so here's another example
this is a famous steel ax that stands
today still between the paws of the
Great Sphinx at Giza
talks about a prince a thousand years
after the Sphinx was carved who comes
and takes a nap in the shadow of the
Sphinx and the Sphinx appears to him in
a dream and says dude I'm covered in
sand if you will make me if you will dig
the sand out I will make you Pharaoh and
that's what this story tells you so we
wanted to make a reproduction of this in
modern resin using an old plaster cast
my creative curator is doing this very
analog project here makes the mold pulls
away this rubbery mold and we've got
instant modern colored resin that looks
just like pink
ran it and we set that up in the Harvard
Semitic museum I'd love to recreate the
Sphinx but I don't have the ceiling
height so the next thing to do is an
augmented reality display so the
students can download this app you can
do it too
it's on Apple or Google Play Store it's
called dreaming the Sphinx and what you
do is download it if you're in the
museum you aim at the the Stila and it
becomes the target and bit by bit you
can hit the next button and cycle
through the English translation of all
of these little pieces if you're in New
Haven for example you can download a
two-page pdf aim your phone at the
hieroglyphs and the same thing will
happen that's one feature another is you
can hit the other button and you'll
actually be standing between the paws of
the Sphinx and you can look around in
360 and see what it's like to be there
or hit the time slider and move ahead a
thousand years and see it in the Old
Kingdom in the New Kingdom or in its
present day condition today like this
and then you can cycle around and and
see what it's like to stand between the
paws of the Sphinx which are
out-of-bounds these days regular
tourists can't get there one other thing
this display does is we experimented
with floor targets and so if you aim
your phone at this floor target up pops
the Sphinx again and once more with the
chronological slider so you can see it
before that Stila came a thousand years
earlier maybe what it looked like in the
Old Kingdom then the New Kingdom when
the Stila comes in and a statue of the
King and then finally in its current
state so you can download this app and
you can do this it's about 150 Meg's so
you want to be on a good Wi-Fi
connection but it works with Android and
iOS and it's pretty stable just aim the
phone at your hieroglyphs in you can do
everything you can do in the museum this
summer we had a portable 3d scanner that
we got right here it's an art xpadder
and so we scan the entire Egyptian
collection in our Museum basement this
summer about 350 objects mostly smallish
and we've just gotten three of these
Cinda 3d printers can't do gigantic
things but we're just starting to
experiment with getting some of the
items in our collection 3d printed so
first the models go to sketchfab we hope
the whole world will be able to rotate
and study these objects maybe download
and 3d print if they have access if not
we can use these hopefully as teaching
tools and bring them to class I'm hoping
to get things a little bit bigger than
these little bite-sized pieces here
that's the original
in this case and I think size is
everything here making these models is
great fun if you don't have the 3d
scanner you can do it just with
photogrammetry so take your camera shoot
50 or 60 images of an object like this
and then use photo scan and stitch them
all together this is our visualization
classroom and we can rotate things all
around it's been great fun I should also
introduce our visiting professor dr.
Chun Udo from su gyeong University in
China he is helping connect our class by
a zoom to students in China who are
actually watching our Giza class live
and participating my goal is that
they're gonna put on their oculus Go
headsets and we'll put on ours and the
Harvard students and the China students
will meet in front of the Sphinx and
we'll have a virtual lecture at Giza
that's where we're we're heading so
these excavations are never done there
are people working at the site now so if
you do a big project know that it's
never quite over right there's always
stuff to add and to refine and to
augment so we're never quite up to date
with our Giza project but there are
always things to be experimented with
and added and I'll just list a couple of
the things that that we deal with and
maybe some of these will catch your eye
and perhaps we can even help you with
them so for example in the old website I
have this wonderful zoomable
aerial photo from 1936 and I made every
tomb a rollover button so just roll over
it click on the tomb and up pops all the
related data and media or I wandered the
site for many years and I shot QuickTime
virtual reality panoramas these little
blinking dots all over the site where
you could just click the button and
stand and look around prime example of
technology going out of style Apple does
not support its own QuickTime VR
technology anymore and so most of those
cute DVRs are dead they need to be
converted to html5 Reap lot this whole
site again and that's the kind of thing
I'd like to bring back to life I
mentioned our mirador viewer our page
viewer which is a pretty sophisticated
system has an attainable stuff savable
stuff that all needs to be built in and
we're working on that getting it in our
website there are always wonderful Egypt
illogical projects like who owns these
tombs and what are their hieroglyphic
administrative titles can I search for
them can I say am I dealing with this
same guy he's named neferhotep he's
named neferhotep how do I know it's the
same well scrape the data
see who he's married to see who he's
married to if it's the same person where
they have the same job title maybe
you've got the same same kind of person
we also have a see Soros and this is
allowing you to look at a photograph and
actually search by content so it's a
kind of a clumsy system in our old
website and it's not quite built-in and
our new one but we're working on that so
for example you're doing a thesis on
images of women sitting holding a lotus
blossom you know with musicians and the
attendants you can click all those boxes
in the system we'll do a search for all
that kind of content much more useful
than just looking at the caption for the
photo or the description that can't go
into that much detail there's always
more 3d modeling to do we're actually
doing an experiment in our gaze a class
where every student will get a tomb and
we've teamed up with the 3d modeling
company does so system based in Paris
and also here in Waltham and we'll be
using a new software package from them
called X design and we have a special
teaching assistant who will take them
through the process of 3d y or framing
and building modeling maybe even text
your mapping and adding textures so each
one gets a tomb that hopefully will if
good enough we'll go into our he's a
tomb model yeah that is that project and
what else
data mining stuff virtual reality
augmented reality we have one other Giza
object in our Semitic museum gallery
it's a reproduction but it would be a
pretty cool topic for augmented reality
as well so it's always a challenge to
figure out what do we need what skills
do students have the time frame you've
got to do projects you know is there a
good match there do we have people who
can supervise but there's no end of
creative stuff we can do them now and
it's not just for classroom use it's for
research by scholars it's a real-world
project it's 3d modeling as 3d printing
available from the public it's museum
displays in the Harvard Semitic museum
and hopefully elsewhere eventually as
well and the dream is to not just have
these be empty shells but eventually
every single tomb built in the kind of
detail that you saw some of the other
models showing so that you can view Giza
at one period in time or then another
period of time or dive underground and
see what all this looks like with the
burial sense coming down and surrounding
you all of this helps us understand how
the place developed chrono
how it spread organically or not
chronological reconstructions dating
criteria understanding basically ancient
Egyptian culture through this lens of
the most famous site I think in the
whole Nile Valley the Giza pyramids
that's a whirlwind overview of what we
do in our kiesza project and I think in
my own time I'm just about on time so I
have a few minutes for questions either
from New Haven or from Cambridge happy
to try to answer any