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Visualizing Ancient Egyptian landscapes and material culture:
Goals: To develop and integrate applications of visualization technologies in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, history of art and history of ancient Egypt, into immersive visualizations and VR/AR applications that allow scholars, students, and the interested public to navigate from the large landscape, to the monument, and to the magically inscribed sarcophagus in its ancient Egyptian context. This CITRIS seed-funding project awarded to Rita Lucarelli (UCB) and Elaine Sullivan (UCSC) allows us to explore new ways to present, interpret, and share new forms of research and scholarship.
Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis of Saqqara
Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis of Saqqara
Dr. Elaine Sullivan produces 3D GIS visualizations to explore how concepts of sacred space were re-interpreted as the built and natural landscape changed, creating new meanings as individuals and communities re-negotiated the form and use of the site over time.
The Book of the Dead in 3D
The Book of the Dead in 3D
Dr. Rita Lucarelli's work develops 3D models to examine the interconnection between magic, science and religion in ancient Egypt and in Antiquity by focusing on magical texts belonging to the corpus of the so-called “Book of the Dead” and to other related magical compositions on material items in their cultural contexts.
The Saqqara VR experience
The Saqqara VR experience
Screenshots from the VR experience
Screenshots from the VR experience
The Saqqara landscape (26th Dynasty)
Descending underground
Entering the tomb
Translating hieroglyphics
360 scene from the VR experience
360 scene from the VR experience
What are we learning from this project?
What are we learning from this project?
Experimentation & Learning
Experimentation & Learning
Be prepared to make mistakes and even start over.
The development pipeline - We are doing something new!
Content for scholarship needs significant refactoring.
Content from different applications can be difficult to bring together into a single experience.
Iterate, iterate, iterate.
Storyboards are a good vehicle for design discussions.
Testing and iteration improve the immersive experience.
Design innovations we are proud of:
Landscape/GIS models - Level of Detail implementation
Interactions for hieroglyphic translation
Observations & Perspectives
Observations & Perspectives
Balancing needs for scholarly authenticity and immersive experience (game-like) is a challenging and healthy area for us to explore.
Despite a lot of work, there is still an absence of good quality content. We have a responsibility to work in this area (before others take it over completely).
This is an emergent domain: Lack of standards and best practices, but that's beginning to change.
Other lessons to learn from game-making and film anticipated.
Support the user and instructor (remember that most people have still not even had a VR headset on)
Skills needed & the team
Skills needed & the team
Ours is a vertical and interdisciplinary team - faculty, staff, undergrad and grad students - with a range of subject expertise, technical skills, and design skills. VR projects require this kind of mix.
Best practices and tools are emerging in different domains that can be brought together in powerful ways -- Digital Humanities, Computer Science, Architecture, and others.
The technical skills needed can be very specialized (for coding and graphics software). Frameworks are immature. Software is expensive.
Students are learning these technologies. The skillset does require significant experience.
Project management and coordination are needed.
Next steps
Next steps
Complete this prototype in the next 2-3 months.
More QA and testing.
Add instructions for user and for those supporting the user.
Add transcription text (accessibility).
And then what?
How do we publish this work?
How do we cite this work?
How do we preserve this work?
And the future?
And the future?
Partner with other archaeologists developing visualizations.
Apply for funding to develop a version for broader publication.
Share with colleagues in Egypt.
AR/XR experiments.
Credits and Contact Information
Credits and Contact Information
Project Directed by: Dr. Rita Lucarelli (UC Berkeley), Dr. Elaine Sullivan (UC Santa Cruz), Dr. Chris Hoffman (chris.hoffman@berkeley.edu, UC Berkeley)
Project Generously funded by: The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)
Project Contributors:
Jess Johnson, Mike Lee, Nik Yerasi, Olivia Kim, Xiaoyan Kang, Kea Johnston - UC Berkeley
Reed Scriven, Savannah Dawson, Chris Cain, Dr. Kristina Golubiewski-Davis, Dr. Daniel Story - UC Santa Cruz
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