Lecture: Discovery and Digital Curation of Textual Archives
Category: Department of Near Eastern Studies
Lecture: Discovery and Digital Curation of Textual Archives
The Book of the Dead in 3D. Visualizing the ancient Egyptian magic for the dead
During this year (AY 2017-2018), we have continued to build 3D visualizations of ancient Egyptian coffins and to progress in disseminating 3D models of previously unpublished ancient Egyptian coffins kept in the storage rooms of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA) at UC Berkeley. We are also continuing the textual and iconographic analysis of the 3D models by creating interactive annotations on the models themselves.
Creating Immersive, Interactive Environments for Engaging with Ancient Egyptian Coffins
Since 2015 and thanks to funding from two earlier collaborative research grants, I have been building 3D models of selected ancient Egyptian coffins from the Egyptian collection housed at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. This category of artefacts is central for the study and understanding of the ancient Egyptian funerary religion, literature and iconography. Coffins were elite items for protecting a mummy and enabling the deceased’s soul to travel in the netherworld and therefore they were richly decorated inside and outside by scribes and artists of the time.
Benjamin Porter
Benjamin W. Porter is Director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and an Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the University of California, Berkeley's Near Eastern Studies Department. Porter is a Near Eastern archaeologist who investigates how past Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies built resilient communities and institutions in arid and semi-arid zones. He directs field archaeology projects in Jordan at the Iron Age capitals of Dhiban and Busayra.