Exhibition: Scanning Seti. The Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb

In 1817, when Giovanni Battista Belzoni discovered the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings, he was fascinated by the perfect preservation of the wall decorations. He documented the relief paitings in great detail in a series of watercolours that later became a godsend for researchers. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for the tomb together with destructive restoration techniques and the presence of humans over the years have caused immense damage to this ancient site. 

The rock-cut tomb of Seti I (1290–1279 BC) is the largest and most important of its kind in the Valley of the Kings.  The Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative, a collaboration between the Factum Foundation and the University of Basel has studied, recorded and reconstructed the tomb of Seti I to present today – 200 years after its discovery– the journey of the tomb of Seti I. 

Visitors can enter full-scale facsimiles of two chambers of the tomb: room I ¨The Hall of Beauties¨ and room J, the pillared section of the chamber. A complete facsimile of the sarcophagus made using Océ´s elevated printing technology is included in the exhibition alongside with fragments removed over the past 200 years.

The facsimiles were created using data recorded in the original tomb in Luxor with non-contact technologies developed by Factum Arte, including specialized 3D scanning techniques and composite photography. This 3D and colour data was used to create an exact facsimile of the tomb as it is today. Belzoni’s watercolours and Harry Burton’s photographs were used to recreate the Hall of Beauties as it might have looked in 1817 and in the 1920s. One of the highlights of the exhibition is Seti’s magnificent sarcophagus. The original has been in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London since 1824 but this superb facsimile, made using Océ´s elevated printing technology,  will allow it to be seen for the first time in the context of the rest of the tomb. 

Antikenmuseum Basel
29.10.2017 – 06.05.2018

Scanning Seti – The Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb
29 October 2017 – 6 May 2018

Factum Foundation
 
Opening hours
Tues, Wed, Sat, Sun: 11:00 to 17:00
Thurs, Fri: 11:00 to 22:00 (free entry from 17:00)