Thanks to Rhio Barnhart for this link. There are some good images on this page, together with links to QuickTime videos.
What did Thutmose III have against his aunt, now considered to be one of the most successful pharaohs of all time? Was he merely sexist? Or was he threatened by the possibility that Hatshepsut’s own daughter might try to usurp his throne?
While scholars may never know the exact answers to these and other tantalizing mysteries, they are at least able to visualize one of the most important remaining records of this and other ancient Egyptian power struggles, thanks to the latest 3-D computer model from UCLA’s Experiential Technologies Center (ETC) in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design.
The result of two years of painstaking research by a team of more than 24 scholars and technicians, Digital Karnak explores how scores of existing ruins may have originally looked and demonstrates how they came to be altered over time as generations of pharaohs put their stamp on the site that served as the religious center for Thebes, the Ancient Egyptian capital during the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.
“Ancient Egyptian texts didn’t write about these kinds of rivalries,” said Diane Favro, ETC director and the project’s principal investigator. “So we rely on architectural transformations and depictions on contemporary reliefs to provide invaluable information about Egypt’s rich history.”
Through interactive architectural plans and intricate perspective illustrations, Digital Karnak traces the site’s evolution over two millennia, encompassing 63 distinct features of this major religious center located on the Nile’s eastern bank at Thebes, a little more than a mile north of modern Luxor.
Accompanied by ETC’s most ambitious web interface to date, Digital Karnak shows the site at any point in time between 1951 B.C. and 31 B.C., allowing users to fast-forward from a single temple occupying a two-acre site to a sprawling complex covering 69 acres with eight temples, 10 small chapels, 10 monumental gateways, 15 obelisks, 100 sphinxes and even a ceremonial lake.
The Digital Karnak project can be found by clicking here.
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