Monday, January 17, 2011

Facsimile of Boy King’s crypt includes lost panel reconstructed from photographs

The Art Newspaper

With photos.

Tourists to Egypt will soon be able to visit the tomb of Tutankhamun without setting foot in the Valley of the Kings. A €500,000 life-size facsimile of the Boy King’s tomb and sarcophagus are to be installed in the revamped Suzanne Mubarak Children’s Museum in Cairo (slated to open early this year). The copy, created using the latest scanning technology, will eventually join replicas of the tomb of Tuthmosis III and a room from Nefertari’s tomb in a visitor’s centre planned for 2012 near British archaeologist Howard Carter’s home at the entrance of the Valley of the Kings.

The facsimile, created by Madrid-based workshop Factum Arte in collaboration with Zahi Hawass, the director general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the University of Basel, the Friends of the Royal tombs of Egypt and the Foundation for Digital Tech­nology in Conservation, are part of the council’s long-term preservation of King Tut’s tomb which currently attracts 1,000 visitors per day.

1 comment:

Stuart Tyler said...

Lost fragment. Lost by whom? Surely inventories of every storage magazine in Egypt are known?
Perhaps not. Slightly worrying when considering how much "missing information" we have throughout the pharonic times. Maybe many things can be resolved when we know EXACTLY what has already been excavated in the past... just my early thoughts.

Stuart