The Tomb of Seti I, Tomb KV17 is located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and is also known by the names “Belzoni’s tomb”, “the Tomb of Apis”, and “the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois”. It is the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty, father of Ramses the Great. The tomb of Seti I is one of the largest and best decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but now is almost always closed to the public due to damage. It was first discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni on 16 October 1817. When he first entered the tomb he found the wall paintings in excellent condition with the paint on the walls still looking fresh and some of the artists paints and brushes still on the floor.

The tomb contains very well preserved reliefs in all but two of its eleven chambers and side rooms. One of the back chambers is decorated with the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, which stated that the mummy’s eating and drinking organs were properly functioning. Believing in the need for these functions in the afterlife, this was a very important ritual. A very long tunnel (corridor K) leads away deep into the mountainside from beneath the location where the sarcophagus stood in the burial chamber. Recently, the excavation of this corridor was completed. There was no ’secret burial chamber’ or any other kind of chamber at the end. Work on the corridor was abandoned upon the burial of Seti I.

The sarcophagus of Seti I was removed from the tomb on behalf of the British consul Henry Salt. KV17 was damaged when Jean-François Champollion, translator of the Rosetta Stone, removed a wall panel of 2.26 x 1.05 m in a corridor with mirror-image scenes during his 1828-29 expedition. Other elements were removed by his companion Rossellini or the German expedition of 1845. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre, the museums of Florence and Berlin.

Source: Wikipedia

Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.

Thebes was inhabited from around 3200 BC. It was the eponymous capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. Waset was the capital of Egypt during part of the 11th Dynasty (Middle Kingdom) and most of the 18th Dynasty (New Kingdom) With the 19th Dynasty the seat of government moved to the Delta. The archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height.

The name Thebai is the Greek designation of the ancient Egyptian opet “The Karnak Temple” (from coptic ta-pe, Ta-opet became Thebai). At the seat of the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, Thebes was known in the Egyptian language from the end of the New Kingdom as niwt-imn, “The City of Amun.” The Romans rendered the name Diospolis Magna.

In 1979, the ruins of ancient Thebes were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage site.

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the Djeser-Djeseru (“Holy of Holies”), is located beneath the cliffs at Deir el Bahari on the west bank of the Nile near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It is dedicated to the sun god Amun-Re.

Hatshepsut’s chancellor, royal architect, and possible lover Senemut oversaw construction and most likely designed the temple. Although the adjacent, earlier mortuary temple of Mentuhotep was used as a model, the two structures are nevertheless significantly different in many ways. Hatshepsut’s temple employs a lengthy, colonnaded terrace. There are three layered terraces reaching 97 feet tall. Each ’story’ is articulated by a double colonnade of square piers, with the exception of the northwest corner of the central terrace, which employs Proto Doric columns to house the chapel. These terraces are connected by long ramps which were once surrounded by gardens with foreign plants including frankincense and myrrh trees. The layering of Hatshepsut’s temple corresponds with the classical Theban form, employing pylons, courts, hypostyle hall, sun court, chapel and sanctuary.

The relief sculpture within Hatshepsut’s temple recites the tale of the divine birth of a female pharaoh – the first of its kind. The text and pictorial cycle also tell of an expedition to the Land of Punt, an exotic country on the Red Sea coast. While the statues and ornamentation have since been stolen or destroyed, the temple once was home to two statues of Osiris, a sphinx avenue as well as many sculptures of the female pharaoh in different attitudes – standing, sitting, or kneeling.

The Temple of Edfu is located on the west bank of the Nile in the city of Edfu, known in Greco-Roman times as Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief god Horus-Apollo. It is one of the best preserved temples in Egypt. The temple, dedicated to the falcon god Horus, was built in the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 BC.

The building was started during the reign of Ptolemy III and completed under Ptolemy XII. It was built on the site of an earlier, smaller temple also dedicated to Horus, although the previous structure was oriented east-west rather than north-south as in the present site.

A naos of Nectanebo II, a relic from an earlier building, is preserved in the inner sanctuary, which stands alone while the temple’s barque sanctuary is surrounded by nine chapels.

The Temple of Edfu’s archaeological significance and high state of preservation has made it a center for tourism in Egypt and a frequent stop for the many riverboats that cruise the Nile.

Wikipedia

A virtual recreation of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids of Giza.

The Temple of Isis at Philae as it might have appeared in ancient times, reconstructed by Mark Millmore.
http://www.eyelid.co.uk

The approach by water to the Temple of Isis in Philae is quite the most beautiful. Seen from the level of a small boat, the island, with its palms, its colonnades, its pylons, seems to rise out of the river like a mirage. Piled rocks frame it on either side, and the purple mountains close up the distance. As the boat glides nearer between glistening boulders, those sculptured towers rise higher and even higher against the sky. They show no sign of ruin or age. All looks solid, stately, perfect. One forgets for the moment that anything is changed. If a sound of antique chanting were to be borne along the quiet air–if a procession of white-robed priests bearing aloft the veiled ark of the God, were to come sweeping round between the palms and pylons–we should not think it strange.

Source: Wikipedia

3D reconstruction of the Great Precinct of Amun in Karnak (Egypt), done by Marc Mateos for a lecture in Museu Egipci de Barcelona in October 2004.

The Karnak Temple Complex comprises a vast conglomeration of ruined temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings, notably the Great Temple of Amen and a massive structure begun by Pharaoh Ramses II (ca. 1391–1351 BC). An ancient sacred lake is part of the site as well. It is located near Luxor, some 500 km south of Cairo, in Egypt. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut (“The Most Selected of Places”) and the main place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes. The Karnak complex takes its name from the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of el-Karnak, some 2.5 km north of Luxor.

Source: Wikipedia

Harvard professor and Egyptologist Peter der Manuelian and 3D software company Dassault Systèmes are partnering on an exciting project that promised to rock the world of archeology! This video gives you a feel for what’s to come.

The Giza Archives Project at the MFA, directed by Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian, strives to collect, digitize, and make accessible to the world community all the archaeological information about Giza.

By intelligently linking different types of data together, Web users can “reconstruct” the archaeological history of any tomb, statue, or monument at Giza. Powerful advanced search features can help students collect and study tomb wall scenes showing subjects such as musicians, livestock, festivals, or craftsmen at work.

We can track the history of any tomb or wall scene or inscription, and see how it has changed over time, which provides valuable assistance to our important conservation and restoration work. As time passes and the monuments suffer from the elements, these archival photos and documents only increase in value.

The Giza Archives Web site includes satellite photography, zoomable plans of countless tombs, and even Google Earth-like aerial photos where you can click on any tomb to see its information. You can also view any one of the 1,300 interactive, 360-degree spinning panoramas from all over the site, both inside and outside the tombs, which is a great way to experience those tombs that must remain closed to visitors in order to protect them.

Future plans include experiments with 3D real-time models of the entire Giza plateau, with links to the archaeological data.

A virtual reconstruction of tomb of Nefertari, the great wife of Ramses II, helps us to appreciate the general layout plan of the tombs west of Thebes. It shows a series of corridors and chambers dug into the hillside.

The entrance has a ladder that gives access to the lobby, a hall and an attached room. Another stretch of ramp leads to the burial chamber, supported by 4 pillars. This chamber has small adjoining rooms that served as warehouses for the funerary offerings. The shrine or cella, dedicated to worship, enclosed the grave.
The decorated walls represented the journey of the deceased queen on her way up to become divine.

The tomb of Nefertari is without doubt the most beautiful in Egypt.

A quick walkthrough of a 3D model of the Tomb of Nakht. The model was made with AC3D, lit with Gile[s], and converted to a web-accessible 3D environment using Blink 3D.

Since Blink 3D has been discontinued, the Virtual Tomb of Nakht has been re-created with Unity 3D.