we have all of this archaeological
evidence and documentation for Giza from
the great excavations in the early part
of the 1900s
so why move into visualization and 3d
can that help us with our scholarship is
there something new to learn here well
take a look at some of these examples
with me where's the best place to study
Giza is an interesting question to ask
of course out at the site is a wonderful
place then I'm never going to advocate
that no one ever go there or use some
kind of substitute for visiting the site
of Giza itself it is a spectacular
experience however in many ways you can
study Giza better from archival
documentation and I will argue even from
3d visualization so take a look at this
photograph from about 1927 and if you
look at the condition of this scene
today unfortunately it's in much sadder
shape the figures are deteriorated it's
hard to recognize what's going on so
there's a case where we turn to the
archives or how about this we're now in
the Berlin Museum and you're seeing the
facade of the tomb of Mareb if you went
back to Gaza you would see a hole in the
ground because this chapel was removed
in the 1840s
so through 3d visualizations such as you
see in this model we can virtually
repatriate the Chapel of mihrab back to
Giza and experience it right where it
originally belong another example of
then and now you see a man carrying an
Oryx or a gazelle on the left in pretty
good condition and on the right
unfortunately suffering terribly so our
approach is to try to visualize the
entire Giza Plateau that's not to
eliminate all the great archaeological
evidence that dig photos and Diaries and
maps or a visit to study the originals
up close and personal all of these
things are critical but by making a 3d
model of the site we can now get to
areas that normal humans don't have
access to and we can start to ask some
new research questions that were
previously impossible and the important
point is this isn't a video game it's
based on the sound archaeological
evidence of many many decades of hard
work by
our predecessors so that means starting
with maps and plans and section drawings
and building up computer models in
wireframes and then texture mapping them
and adding different types of stone
casing types and other types of colors
and eventually we get a photorealistic
appearance of these buildings it also
means we can repatriate or build 3d
models of specific objects and put them
right back into the rooms that they were
originally found in so this enhances our
understanding of the archaeological
context of the site something we don't
get of course if we visit Giza today
many of these objects are now in museums
and since we're paying close attention
to the archaeological record we could
take something like the tomb of Hedda
Paris which was found in 1925 with so
much of the wood and materials
deteriorated that it was just a pile of
debris on the floor but thanks to the
careful documentation that has allowed
us to build a 3d model and even restore
all of the Queen's furniture you'll
learn more about that in another module
I'm often fond of saying I would love to
see the tombs eye view of Giza in other
words to dive down into the underground
limestone bedrock and look upwards and
see all of those wonderful burial shafts
leading up into the mastaba tombs well
with 3d modeling we can do that mortals
can't dive into limestone but we can
hover around and rotate around burial
shafts and get a real sense of how these
sub structures of these buildings
connect and relate to the super
structures below ground and above ground
and in this particular image you see the
original excavation photo of a burial
chamber in 1906 and then the modeling
the wireframe and then the completed
reconstruction this is a room that is
underground it's completely sanded over
again and no one has been there since
1906 and of course 1906 was
black-and-white photography so through
our 3d modeling we can recreate aspects
of this chamber faithfully reproduced
based on the archaeological evidence but
now in color and now with complete
freedom of movement eventually we'll be
building all of the Giza Plateau and we
hope to lend the kind of detail and
meticulous care to the structure of
every single master
it's casing types its shapes of
limestone blocks its Chappell decoration
this is a big job and it may involve
crowdsourcing but one by one we can
actually model the entire site in
faithful detail in terms of the Royal
temples we too have things to learn here
from visualization on the floor of
khafre's valley temple here you see the
emplacements or those rectangular niches
or holes in the floor partially restored
today but those originally contained the
bases of statues of Khafre question is
how big were they where the platform's
big where the statues big so by placing
our 3d models in these emplacements on
the floor we can start to experiment and
get a sense of how big or how small they
should be reconstructed here is a very
colourful rendering of the men car a
valley temple remember this was built in
stone by men Caray but he probably died
too soon
and so his successor and son Shep's his
cough tried to finish it in mud brick it
went through multiple building phases
indicated by the white and the pinkish
colors here and then was actually
inhabited all of those dwellings in the
courtyard came later towards the end of
the Old Kingdom so we can almost
magically pick these elements apart and
look at the temple at various points in
time empty full complete half complete
limestone mud brick all with different
color coding that's something you don't
get when you visit Giza itself this
temple is completely buried you won't
see a thing today there are also ways to
experiment with what you see on the
walls in this example we can actually
point to items in the tomb carvings and
paintings such as furniture belonging to
this Queen and if we click on an element
it pops off the wall as a 3d model which
we can then rotate in space and get a
better understanding of imagine if you
could walk into a tomb and click on
absolutely anything that's represented
on the chapel walls and have it pop into
3d real-life for you here's an example
of some famous tombs that have nothing
surviving above-ground no superstructure
just the subterranean decorated chambers
so here again with 3d modeling we can
experiment what should be over these
tomb areas was it a master bow was an
enclosure wall was it something simpler
so once again
with visualization can help us
understand the development of this part
of the cemetery further sometimes you
have to draw a clear line between what
you're restoring and what you know about
what's archaeologically attested so in
this case we're looking from the air at
that dark patch on the east side of the
Great Pyramid that is all that remains
of the basalt flooring of Khufu's
pyramid temple down below is a 3d model
in this case rather hypothetical based
on other mortuary temples that are from
the same period and with the same basalt
flooring but again we have to delineate
carefully what we know and what we don't
know what we are theoretically restoring
we can even put human characters back
into the scene this lends a sense of
proportion helps us understand the use
of various areas and buildings better so
in this view you're looking at the
central field that's the area now choked
with tombs behind the Sphinx but before
it was a cemetery it was the quarry zone
for all of the core limestone blocks
that went into the Great Pyramid and
here you see thousands and thousands of
Egyptians hard at work in the quarry
carving the individual blocks that would
then be towed on sledges up to the Great
Pyramid which is just barely rising in
the distance in this model simulations
can help us as well here's the
subterranean Chapel of Queen Maris ankh
and the arrow points to a window leading
into the chapel once we go inside we can
see if we reconstruct the course of the
sunlight that the Sun pierces through
that window right through the room and
illuminates the false door or the sacred
offering place in another chamber that's
something we wouldn't have known without
building the 3d modeling and in fact we
can now think about where are the
neighboring buildings and would they
have blocked the Sun coming in to that
window if so does that tell us which
tombs were first in which tombs were
second and in fact help us
chronologically reconstruct this part of
the cemetery all based on a few shafts
of sunlight and a window and now here's
a case study this is a chapel of a man
named Nefer he built this exterior stone
chapel and where all the men are
standing was once a beautifully
decorated four walls of this room now
this gets tricky
follow along with me this entrance niche
or jamb is in Boston
on the other side of the entrance this
piece is now in Paris if we go inside
and look at the south wall the upper
part of the standing couple is in Boston
the rest of their bodies are still at
Giza in the tomb we can put them
together and you can see them now
reunited and over to the west wall it
gets even more confusing this little
block with part of the name of Nemours
wife is in Birmingham England right next
door are two connecting pieces in
Copenhagen and they also join a fragment
still on the chapel wall itself at Giza
next to that is the upper part of the
false door this is in Rome put it all
together and it makes quite a jigsaw
puzzle we're never going to do this
physically so here we're just doing it
photographically but the next step of
course is 3d modeling there's nothing on
the south wall but around onto the east
wall we have more pieces in this case
another fragment in copenhagen and that
one adjoins to a standing representation
of Nefer and his spouse still on the
chapel wall so putting all these pieces
together virtually is really the only
way to understand this tomb from there
we can start to colorize the scenes
understand the hieroglyphic inscriptions
better and in fact the relationships of
all the decoration on these walls we can
even recreate a 3d model of reissner's
Harvard camp the expedition headquarters
to the west of khafre's pyramid here you
see a rendering of the courtyard which
was always full of statues and ceramics
and stone vessel fragments this was the
central headquarters um where the
expedition based everything wrote their
publications held court entertained
visitors showed colleagues around and
this was really an integral part of the
entire story of the excavation of the
Giza necropolis
you