Digital Karnak traces the site's evolution over two millennia, encompassing 63 distinct features of this major religious center.
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After being crowned one of ancient Egypt's rare female pharaohs, Queen Hatshepsut renovated a coronation hall lined with statuary depicting her father as a god. In the center of the hall, she installed two 10-story red granite obelisks and a beautiful red quartzite chapel inscribed with images of herself erecting the colossal obelisks. Hatshepsut was a little too successful: When her nephew, Thutmose III, who was for years co-ruler in her shadow, finally succeeded the 15th century B.C. queen, he removed the upgrades, partially bricked over the obelisks and tore down the chapel.
What did Thutmose III have against his aunt, one of the most successful pharaohs of all time? While we may never know the exact answers to that question, we 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.
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 ETC is renowned for making sense of such historic landscapes. Under Favro’s direction, the team has digitally reconstructed dozens of important landmarks that either have been lost or altered beyond recognition, including Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries and ancient sites in Rome including the Colosseum and Forum. ■
What did Thutmose III have against his aunt, one of the most successful pharaohs of all time? While we may never know the exact answers to that question, we 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.
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.
The ETC is renowned for making sense of such historic landscapes. Under Favro’s direction, the team has digitally reconstructed dozens of important landmarks that either have been lost or altered beyond recognition, including Pompeii’s Villa of the Mysteries and ancient sites in Rome including the Colosseum and Forum. ■