ucla digital karnak model reviewed by british museum curator

The Digital Karnak Project was designed and built at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) under the direction of Dr. Diane Favro (director of the ETC) and Dr. Willeke Wendrich (editor-in-chief of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology).

the ucla digital karnak model has been reviewed by the curator of the department of ancient egypt and sudan at the british museum, neal spencer. the egyptian complex at karnak is the latest digital reconstruction to come out of the ucla experiential technologies center lab. previous models include the roman forum including the colosseum (italy), qumran (west bank), the cathedral at santiago de compostela (spain), and the hypermedia project.

spencer states:

Karnak represents a perfect case study for using virtual reconstructions, satellite imagery and interactive tools to allow interested parties to explore the archaeological site in many different ways. Karnak lends itself to periodisation, something very difficult to visualise when actually among the jumbled up ruins of the temple, with late phase building shrouding much of what went before, and many buildings having been dismantled or moved, even in ancient times. The timemap feature is particularly useful at disentangling the complex construction histories, with maps overlaid on a Google Earth image, and pop-up boxes to allow further investigation of individual buildings. Each ‘feature’ or monument is then associated with an archive, comprising model rendering, photographs (new and old), videos and object references.

read the review here.