Dassault Systèmes and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Use 3-D Technology to Study Giza Pyramids
By STAN PARCHIN
April 21, 2010
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| The Sphinx viewed from the east with Khafre's pyramid in the background. Photograph by Jon Bodsworth. |
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| Digital Recreation of Tomb Complex at Giza Plateau (2010). Dassault Systèmes. |
Dassault Systèmes (DS), a world leader in three-dimensional software solutions, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) announced today a strategic innovation partnership related to the Giza Archives Project, the museum's digital initiative that assembles and links the world's archaeological information on the pyramids and mastabas (tombs) at the Giza Plateau. The collaboration will enable real-time virtual reconstruction of the ancient structures. The MFA's database will benefit from interactive, immersive and multi-platform 3-D experiences for both the scientific community and the general public.
Giza Archives Project
The Giza Archives Project, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, is supervised by Peter Der Manuelian, the MFA's Giza Archives Director and Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University. Assembled in the last decade, its database and Web site contains the world's largest collection of digitized historic expedition photographs, excavation diaries and field notebooks, maps, plans and sketches from the pyramids and tombs at Giza. Most of the documents and images were compiled over 40 years of excavation by George Resiner (1867-1942), who led the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition in Egypt. The project joins today with all of the institutions that possess works related to Giza.
New Collaboration
Dassault Systèmes' new partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is the continuation of a previous one initiated three years ago that studied the pyramid of Khufu. The latest challenge is to create a complete suite of solutions for simulation and visualization of the Giza Archives Project's archaeological data. Innovative forms of multi-platform experiences are to be delivered through Internet devices and more complex virtual and augmented reality systems. The use of powerful scientific simulation tools and 3-D immersion results in new forms of inquiry and communication, allowing hypotheses to be explored in a virtual archaeological environment.
Sources
Arnold, Dorothea, et al. Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.
Brier, Bob and Jean-Pierre Houdin. The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man's Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt's Greatest Mystery. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2009.
Edwards, I.E.S. The Pyramids of Egypt (3rd ed.). New York: Viking Press, 1987.
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