3DVisA Resources

3DVisA Index of 3D Projects: Archaeology

The Virtual Nile Valley. Egypt and Sudan

The Virtual Nile Valley and TroiaVR are both part of a larger project, Virtual Archaeology, based at the Univeristy of Tübingen in Germany and originally also at the University of Cincinnati, US. The aim of Virtual Archaeology is to promote the use of digital technologies in archaeological research.

The project draws on the excavation at Abydos, Dahschur, Siwa and Elephantine carried out by the Kairo Department of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.

A number of Egyptian and Sudanese sites from different periods have been reconstructed digitally to provide an interactive educational tool for the use of 3eneral public, while also investigating how archaeological work can benefit from applications of VR.

The Egyptian sites include the Early Dynastic royal cemetery of Umm el-Qaab as well as monuments from the Middle and New Kingdom at Abydos, including the tomb of Qa'a from about 3500-1200 BC); the temple and selected tombs at Siwa; the town of Elephantine including the Early Dynastic fortress as well as the temples of Satet and Khnum (3000- 1000 BC).

In Sudan, the capital of the Kerma kingdom with its temple and other architecture from the period c. 1500-100 BC; the temples and pyramids of Gebel Barkal (c. 1500-100 BC); the royal cemetery of El Kurru (8th c. BC), and Hamadab-Kabushiya, an urban settlement of the Meroitic period in the 1st century AD.

The budget for both projects was €1,999 000.

Project dates: 2001-2003

Resource status: Unknown. A handful of still images of computer models available online, on the Kairo Department of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut website.

Contributors: Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie des Mittelalters, Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen, Germany; ART+COM AG, Berlin, Germany; Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo, Egypt.

Sources and further details:

The Kairo Department of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut website.

Record compiled by ABK. Last updated: 11 September 2006.