Rita Lucarelli creates 3D images of ancient Egyptian coffins. Using Agisoft Photoscan, the Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies and her team transform 2D photographs into 3D models before annotating the virtual figures with transliterations, translations, and other relevant data. Since Egyptian hieroglyphics adorning funerary materials were copied and read from different directions, 3D interaction with digitized images provides better access to the texts of such objects than traditional 2D representations.

Berkeley Prosopography Services, a tool for historical social network analysis originally developed for use with an Uruk text corpus from the Hellenistic period (331-46 BCE), is currently in the process of being generalized for use with a variety of corpora.

How is the production of art affected by the environment in which it is meant to be presented? DH Intern Ashley Jerbic, a double-major in Art Practice and History of Art, has spent her undergraduate career exploring 3D modeling as a way to approach this question. Through classes and internships with faculty DH Fellows, Jerbic has applied 3D modeling to a variety of disciplines.

DH Fellow Eduardo Escobar, a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies, has turned to network analysis to study semantic and social networks in the history of science. In network analysis, a graph’s nodes (e.g. people, places, words) and their connecting edges (kinship, trade routes, synonyms) are visualized, with the goal of providing scholars with new insights.

On October 23, Dr. Elaine Sullivan, Assistant Professor in the History Department at UC Santa Cruz, visited the Digital Humanities at Berkeley program and the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Her visit was one of several workshops in DH at Berkeley’s series on 3D modeling.

DH Fellow Rita Lucarelli, Assistant Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, researches religion, magic, and funerary culture in ancient Egypt. Her current work engages the Book of the Dead and how it is adapted to various artifacts. Lucarelli’s digital project focuses on creating highly detailed, annotated 3D models of these funerary objects to better understand the materiality of the Book of the Dead texts.

3D modeling offers digital humanists new ways to engage with material culture, restore context to decayed or destroyed spaces, and share resources with both members of the public and researchers around the world. These upcoming workshops will explore two different tools 3D modeling and how they have been applied to digital humanities projects.

Read about how DH Fellows are applying these methods to their research and teaching on the DH blog.

The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology is raising funds through October 15th to bring The Doctor, a gargantuan Egyptian coffin lid, to the public for the Museum’s grand re-opening in 2016. The 2,500 year-old stone coffin lid weighs three tons and is a particularly rare item in the Heart’s collections.

Please join us for two upcoming talks on digital humanities and Egyptology: Kasia Szpakowska on the development of a database at the Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project: Second Millenium BCE, and Willeke Wendre on Ancient Egypt Online.

From the Outside Looking In: Digitization of Ancient Egyptian Objects and Entities

Monday, April 13, 5:30-6:30 PM, 254 Barrows Hall
Kasia Szpakowska (University of Swansea)

The Center for Tebtunis Papyri will be co-hosting a workshop on Digital Humanities and Egyptology with the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Department of Near Eastern Studies.  Organized by Rita Lucarelli, Assistant Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the workshop will explore topics of digital collaboration, collections metadata, 3D visualization.  

First session (open to public)