Talking Pyramids

Yesterday the Giza 3D Project was launched at a gala event at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA).

Peter Der Manuelian After the event I caught up virtually with Peter Der Manuelian, Giza Archives Director at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, and Mehdi Tayoubi, Vice-President Digital & Experiential Strategy at Dassault Systémes to find out a bit more about the project.

Welcome Peter and thank you for taking the time out for this interview.

Giza Archives:
The online repository of archaeological data from the Harvard University & Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition that the Giza Archives Project team have made available online has been greatly appreciated by those interested in Egyptology and the archaeology of the Giza plateau. So first of all, thank you for that, and thank you for taking the time to tell us a bit about Giza 3D.

You experimented with virtual recreations of the mastabas at Giza with your students at a very early stage in 2006 when 3D recreations of sites was a relatively new arena for education. Constructing the site on the popular platform Second Life meant that it was accessible to the public as well as students. I remember exploring the original Giza site in Second Life and hanging out with other Egyptology enthusiasts there from time to time.

These ‘Digital Egyptology’ efforts helped bring the public closer to Archaeology and connect with the past. Is the public appeal something that was considered when creating the Second Life version of Giza?

PDM: The Second Life was an independent student project that I supervised. What we have done in the classroom began in 2010. And the progression goes from scholarship to classroom teaching to the general public. This entire process translates more quickly than ever from the world of scholarship to the general public.

Peter using the Dassault Systemes technology in the class room to show students through one of the Khufu boats at the Harvard University Visualization Center, otherwise known as the ‘cave’

Higher Quality Models = Higher Quality Education:
The slower computers on slower Internet connections in those days meant that platforms like Second Life had rather rough, blocky looking graphics. In some of these earlier attempts to create virtual renditions of archaeological sites the crudeness of the 3D models detracted from their educational value. On other platforms there have been some cases where models were smooth and detailed but not based on real data and as a result were so inaccurate they misinformed the student.

Giza 3D combines the advanced 3D technology of Dassault Systémes with the copious data meticulously collected by the Reisner expedition. The result is incredibly detailed and very accurate with smooth navigation. The realness is quite astounding.

As an educator using these more sophisticated 3D tools in a class setting, how have you seen this increased quality impact the students?

PDM: I used to be concerned that students had very sophisticated video games at home to compete with Giza3D. I should not have worried because what we have carried is based on sound archaeology. In other words, the real world visualized in this way is much more exciting for students than fancy castles, warriors and dragons, no matter how sophisticated the graphics.

View beneath the mastabas in Giza 3D

Underneath Giza:
To the casual observer, the mastabas in the mastaba field to the west of Khufu’s pyramid look like simple, one story mud brick structures. With the reconstructions in Giza 3D, the visitor is taken underground where they can see the extent of the lower levels, the deep shafts leading to the burial chambers of all the mastabas.

This is a truly unique perspective of the Giza Plateau and one that has probably not been perceived until the development of Giza 3D. What other lessons can the virtual reconstruction teach us?

PDM: The virtual reconstruction gives us archaeological content, which means that objects can return to their original find spots. It also shows us relationships (which tombs came first, which came after) and they tell us about spatial dimensions – big, small, above and below ground to name a few.

Length, Breadth, Height …and Time:
The Giza site is very old and was used as a burial site at different periods in history, some thousands of years apart. Understanding these different time periods and the changes that occurred over time is very important to understanding the history of the site. This adds a ‘fourth dimensional’ to Giza 3D so that instead of creating a single model, you’ve created several different versions to show the site at different time periods. Would you explain how these individual layers were segregated, how many different time layers are there?

Peter Der Manuelian PDM: We are still experimenting with different ways to represent different periods of time and different “layers” of Giza development. Sometimes it’s a question of restoring colors to their original vibrancy. In other cases, we can restore statues to their “serdabs” (statue chambers) because we know they were once there. But it’s always important to differentiate between the actual archaeological record, the monuments as found, and any restorations. We don’t want to restore a decorated wall scene if it is so poorly preserved that we can’t determine its original content.

When the entire Giza 3D site is completed, we hope to represent key monuments at different phases. For example, the Menkaure Valley Temple is a very complex structure: begun by King Menkaure in stone, completed by his son Shepseskaf in mud brick, abandoned, damaged, restored in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, and eventually even inhabited as a settlement towards the end of the Old Kingdom. We refer to this as archaeological “phasing,” and we are working to represent all these different “layers.” Reisner did his best to interpret the stratigraphy of the temple, and my colleague, Mark Lehner of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), is reinvestigating parts of the temple. So we have the unique opportunity to combine original excavation records from 1910 with contemporary archaeology. The great royal statuary and other objects found in the temple will also return virtually to both their original findspots and their originally intended locations within the temple, as best as we can determine.

Course trailer video for Societies of the World 38: “Pyramid Schemes: The Archaeological History of Ancient Egypt,” Harvard University, Fall 2010. Instructor: Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology.

A World Wide Work:
It is clear that there is much to be gained from virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites such as Giza. Rather than just replicating the site in digital form though, Giza 3D unifies all the pieces that had been removed and scattered around the world prior to the Reisner expedition to document Giza. Bringing these together with the virtual reconstruction is like ‘virtual repatriation’ of sorts and enables us to see the tombs in a more complete form than if we physically visted Giza today.

Was all of this already in the Giza Archives? How did you collect all of these peices?

PDM: Keep in mind we work not only with Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts records but with all major expeditions to Giza such as other museums and institutions around the world. We have an international collaboration in place that allows us to assemble the world’s first central repository for all GIZA archaeological data.

Thanks Peter.

I turn now to Mehdi Tayoubi.

Hi Mehdi, thanks for your time. Tell us a bit about Dassault Systémes’ involvement in Giza 3D. How was the connection made between the Dassault Systémes team and Harvard University?

MT: Dassault Systèmes’ involvement in Egyptology is not new. Over the past seven years, we have worked in this space starting with Jean Pierre Houdin and his project on the Great Pyramid. We validated his theory in the most complete way ever using our 3D experience platform, which included highly-sophisticated, simulation solutions used with our commercial clients across major industries. I met with Peter in 2008 right after he saw the Great Pyramid work we did; his vision was to build a Giza Plateau using the same 3D technology from the Jean Pierre Houdin project. The source for the digital reconstruction for GIZA 3D came from old archives from the Harvard and Museum of Fine Arts Boston expeditions that took place in the 1900s.

Accuracy:
The level of detail in the Giza 3D models is very high, much more so than many other attempts to ‘virtualise’ the architecture of ancient Egypt. I understand that a lot of the data came from the results of the surveys carried out by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Harvard University expedition led by Reisner.

Was that the only source though? Was there also, for example, any digital scanning of tombs or statues undertaken to construct Giza 3D?

MT: So far we have used the archives from George Reisner’s expedition supported by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, However, we have an international network of museums and institutions actively collaboratively with us and we will continue this work to expand the richness and depth of knowledge in GIZA 3D.

We worked with the following sources:

1. Archives from several archaeological expeditions in the 1900s with George Reisner and the Harvard MFA teams.

2. Peter Der Manuelian’s vast Egyptology knowledge was applied as well as Dassault Systemes’ (DS) scientific reconstruction expertise using 3D.

3. Photographs from the Leeds University robotics project where robots went into narrow air shafts in the pyramids endoscopic ally to photograph the texture, look and shape of hieroglyphics reconstructed digitally in Giza 3D.

4. And also documents and knowledge about Egypt’s pyramids from eight museums around the world:

1. Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna)
2. Ägyptisches Museum (Berlin)
3. Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin)
4. Museo Egizio (Turin)
5. Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim
6. Ägyptisches Museum Der Universität Leipzig
7. Hearst Museum, University of California Berkeley
8. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Giza Archives + Giza 3D:
As I was saying earlier to Peter, the wealth of information from the Reisner expedition that has been made publically available by the Giza Archives Project is a great boon to scholars and enthusiasts. Building an effective and engaging search interface for such a wealth of data that includes not only documents but video, images, sketches, diary pages, etc. is no small feat. One of the aspects of Giza 3D that I’m interested to learn more about is how the Giza 3D functions as a non-linear, three dimensional interface to this data.

Would you tell us a bit about that?

A scene from Giza 3D MT: Today, we have a guided tour in the GIZA 3D experience using an expert voice such as Peter Der Manuelian to guide the visitor through the site and across a variety of themes. It is almost like having a museum guide in real life walking you through an exhibition in a virtual world. And we will continue to add other expert “voices” to the web, especially those that match our visitors whether it be a student, researcher or museum hobbyist. The web visitor also has the freedom the take control of the tour and create a “My Tour” experience, weaving in and out of tombs, temples and even mysteries such as the bonus feature of the life of Queen Hetepheres we decided to have for our launch this year.

Different Platforms:
Will Giza 3D be accessible on a range of platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux?

MT: Yes, GIZA 3D is available today on Windows and Mac. Our next priority before Linux is to work on mobile applications (Androids, iPhones, iPads)

What about mobile platforms such as Android and iOS for iPhone?

MT: Yes, we will support all of these.

Our priority was to equip the classroom with virtual reality technology and content so Harvard University students could have the most immersive learning experience with 3D GIZA. We needed to have this experience be compatible with VR projectors, headsets and touchscreens among many of the VR solutions we used. Our goal in creating this virtual reality classroom environment was to replace the linear PowerPoint lectures with exciting 3D visuals in order to make history learning more interactive and immersive.

Augmented Reality:
I ask specifically about the mobile platforms as I see the potential value of having access to Giza 3D while visiting the Giza plateau. Considering Dassault Systéme’s work with augmented reality in other proects I’m betting there is some implementation of its use in Giza 3D.

I’m imagining the visitor holding up their phone and pointing it at a mastaba and being able to see it in it’s digitally restored state, or to point below the mastaba and see the burial shaft underneath it.

Is this already a feature or will it be part of a future expansion to Giza 3D?

MT: Our goal with GIZA 3D was to build the most accurate and scientific construction of the Giza Plateau. Concurrently, we are working on the digital reconstruction of Paris from prehistoric to modern times. The experience we are building here will include augmented reality functionalities which will then be applied to the 3D Giza project.

The Future of Dassault Systémes & Egyptology:
Dassault Systémes has worked quite extensively at Giza on three projects prior to Giza 3D, two with Jean-Pierre Houdin on Khufu ‘Revealed’ and ‘Khufu Reborn’ and then with ‘Djedi’ with Leeds university involving the recent drilling through the slab in the lower southern shaft in the Khufu pyramid. Some might be wondering why a commercial software company is helping with such projects. Would you tell the readers a bit about Dassault Systémes ‘Passion for Innovation’ program that made these three projects possible?

Does Dassault Systémes have any plans for future Egyptology-related projects?

MT: If we challenge the status quo, we can make any dream possible. This vision is embedded in our company’s DNA and the “Passion for Innovation” program was built on the same principles. Our goal is to work on projects that can help society at large with our 3D experience platform as we have done successfully with clients worldwide.

We will continue to enrich the GIZA 3D project and, as part our Passion for Innovation program, we encourage outside players to apply and be part of the growing community of contributors who will discover new possibilities by sharing and collaborating across a varied field of experts in engineering, robotics, arts, history, and hopefully even more.

Thank you Mehdi and Peter for taking the time to speak with Talking Pyramids and thanks to the team at Dassault Systémes and the Giza Archives Project for your groundbreaking work in ‘Digital Egyptology’ with Giza 3D.

Play the Giza 3D Experience online now for free

Images by Dassault Systémes

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World leading 3D software company Dassault Systémes and Harvard University last night officially unveiled Giza 3D to the world at a gala event at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). It presents the results of over a 100 years of work by the MFA and Harvard University expedition led by George Reisner in the first half of the 20th century.

A computer generated avatar of renowned Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner

Almost forty years of archaeological data collected from those expeditions has, over the past ten years, been laboriously digitised to form the Giza Archives. This includes:

• 1,300 spinning QTVR (Quicktime Virtual Reality) 360-degree panoramas, placed all over the site that allow you to view Giza from 1,300 different standpoints, both inside and outside the tombs
• 3,841 records for Giza tombs & monuments
• 37,199 Photos
• 22,076 records for ancient objects
• 3,977 records for People (both ancient and modern)
• 3,105 expedition diary pages
• 9,909 archaeological Plans & Drawings
• 1,094 published Giza books and articles online as free, downloadable PDFs
• 5,351 unpublished Giza document pages online as free, downloadable PDFs

The Giza Archives Project provides the world with hundreds of thousands of images and documents about Giza. Most of these were previously inaccessible, scattered all over the world or threatened with deterioration. Society benefits by enhanced archaeological site management, cultural heritage preservation, and new opportunities for scholarly research and classroom education. Scholars simply could not have asked the research questions they can now pose, thanks to the Giza website. An integrated bibliography module also provides hundreds of scholarly books and journal articles on the site, all of them linked to the database records for the tombs, statues, pyramids and temples they discuss.

The Giza 3D website is a dynamic way of delivering the enormous collection of archaeological data in the Giza Archives in a way that will appeal to students, enthusiasts, and the general public alike. From the comfort of your home you can explore the Giza Plateau in great detail. Visit the restored tombs, travel through the corridors of the pyramids or dip below the sands and go underground to understand how the burial chambers of the mastabas in the western cemetery relate to each other.

There is a lot to say about Giza 3D, this post is based on my first visit and an overview of the experience. Stay tuned for a follow up story with more information and an interview with Peter Der Manuelian, Giza Archives Director at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, and Mehdi Tayoubi, Vice-President Digital & Experiential Strategy at Dassault Systémes.

My Virtual Experience

My first concern upon arriving at the website was whether or not Giza 3D would run on a Mac. The front page of the website is quite unique and very cleverly designed. Simply scolling the mouse wheel animates the page, introducing the visitor to what they will experience upon launching Giza 3D. It’s an effective way of introducing the visitor to what they are about to experience and entices them to download the small virtools browser plugin, the only requirement to launching Giza 3D which only takes a few seconds. I was excited to find that there would be no hinderance to me being on the Mac operating system as long I used the Firefox browser in 32bit mode. Instructions on the website take the user through the steps to do so.

The Giza 3D Main menu 3D, or 3D TV?

Once Giza 3D has loaded, which should take just a few seconds on a high speed internet connection, the user is presented with a slowly rotating view of Giza with a menu on the left and two configuration icons on the top right of the screen.

One of these configuration icons is for the navigation controls and the other gives the option to view the experience in 3D with standard anaglyph (red and blue lenses) glasses or on a 3D TV. I got out my Dassault Systémes 3D glasses that Jean-Pierre Houdin had sent me earlier with his Khufu Revealed DVD and book package (another Daussault Systémes production), and selected the anaglyph option.

Navigation

Some might find the navigation a little bit tricky to get the hang of and Dassault Systémes have built in a second alternative method of navigation, which I personally felt more comfortable using. You can easily switch between the two modes at any time during your visit enabling a combination of the two to be used depending on your location.

The main menu on the left offers a variety of areas to choose from. Once a location is selected you can either have a guided introduction to the area by Peter Der Manuelian or you can choose to freely explore the area on your own. There are also Object Galleries, Photo Galleries, and other data from the Giza Archives that can be viewed about the selected area. The Object Galleries contain the individual items that can be discovered as you explore each area. For example, while wandering around inside the pyramid of Menkaure I was pleasantly surprised to see that his sarcophagus, which was lost at sea in an effort to transport it back to England, was restored inside his burial chamber. The sarcophagus can also be scrutinised in closer detail in the Object Gallery.

Reconstruction of the Hetepheres Tomb showing floating icons

Any time an icon is spotted hovering over an object it can be clicked on to launch additional information such as a video, image, journals, maps, or other data from the Giza Archives. There are different types of icons, clicking on a box icon will launch a 3D viewer in which you can zoom right up close, and manipulate the object.

Original archival photo the Queen Hetepheres tomb

There are some places that are yet to be developed such as Khafre’s pyramid complex and the Sphinx, these will be added later. Currently only a tenth of the project is completed, leaving a lot more to be added and explored at a later date. I can see visitors will be returning to Giza 3D on a regular basis as it expands. Even at just 10% complete, it would take many hours to view everything currently there.

“The freedom to navigate through the Giza necropolis in real-time 3D, to observe it from an angle and in various stages of completion, offers novel possibilites for archaeological research.” – Peter De Manuelian

The immersive interactive reconstruction of the Giza plateau is now available to the world for free through the web browser at Giza 3D

Download the Giza 3D Press Release.

Stay tuned for my interview with Peter Der Manuelian and Mehdi Tayoubi.

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Behenu's Pyramid Texts A workshop on pyramids is to be held at Geijersalen, Engelska Parken, Uppsala University over two days, May 31st and June 1st.

Speakers will include such notables as Denis Searby, Peter Jánosi, Miroslav Barta, Tarek el-Awady, Jaromir Krejci, Mark Lehner, Catherine Berger, Harold Hays, Roman Gundacker, Nils Billing and Erika Meyer-Dietrich.

There are some very interesting topics on the the programme, such as Erika Meyer-Dietrich’s session: Sonic acting in the pyramid of queen Neith – statements about sound in ritual texts from the time of Pepi II and Catherine Berger’s talk about the Pyramid Texts in the recently discovered pyramid of Queen Behenu.

I look forward to reading reports of the event and perhaps even viewing some video footage. Hopefully audio from all sessions will be released afterwards.

Schedule:

Thursday May 31st

09.15 – Opening of the workshop
09.30 – Denis Searby: Pyramids according to the Greek tradition
10.15 – Peter Jánosi: What did the court in the pyramid temple of Khafre at Giza look like?

11.00 – Coffee break

11.30 – Miroslav Barta: The end of the Fourth Dynasty and the souls of the pharaohs

12.15 – Lunch break

14.00 – Tarek el-Awady: Rediscovering Borchardt’s Abusir photo archives
14.45 – Jaromir Krejci: Foundation and development of the Abusir necropolis

15.30 - Coffee break

16.00 – Mark Lehner: Living at the pyramids – settlements in the southeastern zone of Giza

Friday June 1st

09.30 – Catherine Berger: Les textes de la pyramide de la reine Béhénou – une decouverte récente à Saqqara
10.15 – Harold Hays: Discursive rules of the Pyramid Age

11.00 – Coffee break

11.30 – Roman Gundacker: The original corpus of the texts in the sarcophagus chamber of Pepi I

12.15 – Lunch break

14.00 – Nils Billing: A performative structure – text and architecture in the pyramid of Pepi I
14.45 – Erika Meyer-Dietrich: Sonic acting in the pyramid of queen Neith – statements about sound in ritual texts from the time of Pepi II

15.30 – Coffee break

16.00 – Closing session

A collaboration of the Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History and the
Dept. of Theology. Initiative supported by SALT and Wenner-Gren Stifltelserna.

I’l leave you with some selected videos of the Saqqara area from the Talking Pyramids YouTube channel:

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Polish researcher Teodozja Rzeuska says her research indicates that the Meidum necropolis was used as late as the New Kingdom period, extending its history by over 1500 years.

After early publications by pioneering archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie and others, Rzeuska says that it became “dogma that in Meidum the dead had been buried only in the early reign of the fourth dynasty.” Her research re-analyzed the pottery, other artifacts and dated excavation reports to completely reshape the chronology of the site. This new study calls for a reexamination of the many reports based on the old chronology, which were uncritically dated to the early Old Kingdom.

Read the full story

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You may have noticed that the activity here on Talking Pyramids has died down a bit over the past few months. My ever faithful and trusty assistant Bennu has continued posting lots of news items every day on Twitter, which you can read in the side bar on Talking Pyramids.

GooglePlus
The reason for the slow down of posts here on Talking Pyramids is partly due to GooglePlus. Since June last year I’ve been spending a lot of time trying out the new service by Google called GooglePlus. In case you’re not familiar with it, GooglePlus, or G+ for short, is a little bit like a multi-faceted blog, allowing one to post to different ‘Circles’ or groups of people.

Hangouts
One feature that makes Google+ stand out is ‘Hangouts’. These are group video conferences that anyone can launch at any time with any of their Circles or with the public. Up to ten people at a time can participate in a Hangout with the ability to enter and leave as they choose. It’s a versatile tool that can be used on a computer or a phone or other mobile device with internet access.

There have been several notable people that have utelised the power of Hangouts including the Dali Lama, Desmond Tutu, President Obama, Madonna, and a range of others.

Archaeology Hangout
Like many others, I quickly realised the potential use for Hangouts in education. Over the past 8 months or so I’ve seen some very innovative use of Hangouts including guitar lessons, physics lectures, cooking hangouts where each person cooks their own meal at the same time, English as a second language courses, and many more.

I began running weekly Archaeology Hangouts in which Archaeologists and enthusiasts are able to chat about recent news and about other aspects of archaeology. We’ve had some great discussions on topics such as ‘Digital Archaeology’ and the potential of virtual reconstructions of sites, Archaeology Book Club where reading matter is set a week in advance and then discussed with the group, getting the public more involved in Archaeology, and many other topics.

A website has been established to provide support for the Archaeology Hangouts so that anyone can learn more about the Hangouts, check the calendar for scheduled hangouts and offer suggestions for future discussion topics.

The restriction to just ten people in a Hangout means that those who turn up late miss out. Google have rung me expressing interest in the Archaeology Hangout and have said that we may be eligible for “Hangouts on Air”, a feature that allows the Hangout to be streamed live to YouTube so an unlimited number of people can view the Hangout. For now though, only ten people at a time can participate in the Archaeology Hangout.

If you are interested, you are welcome to join in this week’s Archaeology Hangout at 8:30pm UTC Friday, 2nd March.

For more information visit www.archaeologyhangout.com or point your QR enabled device at the Archaeology Hangout QR code below to take you there directly. Looking forward to seeing you there.

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There have been a few new additions to the Pyramid Texts Online website that I’d like to share with you all.

Hieroglyphic Flash Cards
A new online hieroglyphic flash card tool has been created by Plan Zero.

If you are interested in learning the basics of hieroglyphs these are definitely worth a look. It’s still fresh and new (mind the wet paint) so there may be some missing phonograms at the moment but it is expanding every day.

Before you can view the next card you must enter the corresponding transliteration of the hieroglyph, which can be entered via the on-screen letters or your computer’s keyboard. It has both the European and British styles of transliteration as well as MdC, which you can switch between. This is a nice touch as it enables the student to work just on MdC, or the transliteration of their choice. If you leave the page you can pick up where you left off when you return.

It is easily the best system of flash cards I have seen online yet…including those wonderful vocab videos from Bennu.

Visit the Pyramid Texts Online Tools page, and find the link under the section “Flash Cards”.

The Organisation of the Pyramid Texts
Dr Harold Hays recently contacted to let me know about the forthcoming publication he has written about the Pyramid Texts, The Organization of the Pyramid Texts (a 2 volume set). It should appear before the end of July, the year.

Dr Hays offered a tantalising overview:

“It’s the first comprehensive study of the Pyramid Texts since 1981, and one of the first studies in Egyptology to apply performance theory to the study of ancient Egyptian religion. The first volume makes a classification of Pyramid Texts and determines their original settings in life, as well as dealing in detail with the effects of the transposition of ritual scripts to the pyramid tombs. The second volume consists of reference material: a set of listings of typological information about individual texts, their situations of transmission, and the most important motifs found among texts, as well as a set of 32 plans and 15 charts.”

He also gave me a link to his latest paper, ‘The Death of the Democratization of the Afterlife’, which he asked if I would add it to the Pyramid Texts Online Library. You can find this paper along with other papers by Dr Harold Hays in the Pyramid Texts Online Library.

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If we built the Great Pyramid today, how much would it cost?

It’s a question that pops up from time to time and it’s one that’s not easy to answer. Even taking the shortcut of utelising today’s technology the cost would still be sky-high.

Architect Jean-Pierre reckons it could probably be built for about 5 billion dollars…from the inside out using the Internal Spiral Ramp theory.

“I am quite sure we could do the same today, and it would be the most economical method,” Houdin told Life’s Little Mysteries.

There would be two main differences between pyramid-building now and then. First, “Instead of people pulling the sleds that carry the stones up the ramps, you would use something with an engine,” he said. Secondly, “for the (topmost) 10 or 15 meters, you would use a small crane.”

Just as cranes are lifted onto the tops of skyscrapers today, a helicopter would apposition a crane onto a flat top of the pyramid. Stones and other construction materials dragged up to that level via the internal ramp would then be set in place by the crane. (It wouldn’t be feasible to build the entire structure with cranes, Houdin said, because they wouldn’t be able to reach far enough to lift materials from the base to the center of the top of the pyramid.)

It just so happens that there are plans to build another pyramid.

Artist's impression of the completed Earth Pyramid

The Earth Pyramid project is not quite as large as Khufu’s pyramid but it will still be quite expensive to build.

The outer facing blocks will be made from a range of different types of stone, giving it a patchwork-like appearance. The first course of casing stones that will form the base of the pyramid will consist of 276 blocks with the aim of receiving one stone from each of the world’s nations. The expense of quarrying these stones would be exorbitant and so to keep costs low different methods to create the stones is being considered.

One of these is the Geopolymer method, currently being explored by the team at Louisiana Tech, that will enable the blocks to be poured like cement into molds onsite. It is hoped that the Earth Pyramid’s construction will provide an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the potential of environmentally-friendly technologies for use in future construction projects.

As well as having Jean-Pierre and myself on the team to offer guidance on ancient and modern building methods, world leading architectural design and engineering firm Arup has also recently become involved in the project. Arup is best known for it’s structural design of the Sydney Opera House and also it’s work for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the team will be bringing their expertise in structural engineering, selection of construction materials, environmental & sustainability aspects to the project.

Read more about the Earth Pyramid at the project’s website: http://earthpyramid.org

Sources:
MSNBC
The Earth Pyramid
Arup

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The second boat in it's tomb The restoration of the second Khufu boat began yesterday as planned with the collection of samples of wood from the boat. The boats were made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees. Mustafa Amin, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities:

“The boat was found in a complete shape, intact and in place,” he said, adding that the focus now is on taking samples of the wood.

He said Egyptologists are studying “the different components and fungus in the wood in order to find the most sufficient and advanced way to work on the wood.”

Last year in June, a team of scientists lifted the first of 41 limestone slabs each weighing about 16 tons to uncover the pit in which the ancient ship was buried, said Sakuji Yoshimura, professor from Japan’s Waseda University.

Sources: Egypt begins restoring ancient boat near pyramids
Egypt begins restoring ancient boat near pyramids

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Khufu’s second solar boat will soon be displayed in it’s own museum beside the Great Pyramid with an announcement to be made Monday.

Khufu's 1st Solar boat in it's own museum built above it's grave

At an international press conference held on Egypt’s Giza Plateau next Monday, Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim is expected to announce the launch of the second phase of the Khufu solar boat restoration project, which is being carried out in collaboration with a Japanese archaeological team from Wasida University.

Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the team would collect samples of the boat’s wooden beams for analysis on Monday in order to draw up accurate plans for the boat’s restoration in a special museum located on the plateau.

The first phase of the project, carried out two years ago, assessed the area surrounding the second boat pit with the use of topographical radar surveys. A large hangar has since been built over the second pit, with a smaller hangar erected inside to cover the top of the boat itself. The hangars were especially designed to protect the wooden remains during the project’s analysis and treatment phases.

Read more: Ahram

Photo by zolakoma CC By

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