Tut's Tomb Opens: Virtual Tour of Tutankhamen's Egypt

Recreation of Tut's tomb... click here to begin journey

When British archaeologist Howard Carter first peered through a small crevice into the darkened tomb of King Tutankhamen, someone asked if he saw anything worthwhile.

"Yes," he said, "I see wonderful things."

British metaverse developer Rezzable is trying to convey that sense of awe in their new virtual Tut exhibit, which opened as a public preview for Second Life Residents yesterday. As friends and sponsoring partners to this blog, I am entirely biased about their efforts, but I think they've succeeded.

Beyond that, I offer this short pictorial tour, and let their work speak for itself. The project has been near a year in the making (I got a glimpse of it in London last November), but as it turned out, I'd only glimpsed a very small fragment of a much larger experience. It begins above an Egypt that exists in several time periods:

The entrance is atop this compass rose, high over an Egypt that shifts from a sattelite view, to a 19th century map of the Middle East, to an ancient Egyptianian outline.  (That's Rezzable's RightAsRain Rimbaud suitably garbed up in Egypt finery, acting as my tour guide.)

Rimbaud tells me Tut's tomb has been laid out almost exactly as Carter found it, allowing for some additional space, so the Second Life camera can adequately view the tight interior.

The wall paintings are high detail. Note the large buttons; located throughout the experience, clicking on each plays a narrated audio description of what you're viewing, much a like a museum tour.

The museum area integrates stylized Egyptian architecture with extremely realistic recreations of Tut's treasures: coffin, statuary, alabaster sculpture.

Click to get a closer look at the detail in this alabaster panther. Yes, that's a large crab with a guitar in the background. (Madcow Cosmos, as it happens.) Just another museum patron, and a better one to share this place than, say, a pack of bored screaming kids.

In grand Rezzable style, the experience includes a visit to the afterlife of Tutankhamen, his treasures transformed to giant size amid a constellation of stars and a walkway composed of DNA strands.

These are just brief, 2D glimpses of places designed to be experienced in lingering stretches, first hand, in 3D. Here's the Rezzable directory, where you can start your own tour.

Comments

[Alanagh Recreant]

This is a good addition to African content in Second Life. I am sure to visit it, and should have done so prior to posting actually - but I want to first agree with 'Two Worlds' and echo:

..."what I would REALLY like to see is an actual growing, dynamic community built around this Egypt sim"

Now, this is theoretically possible if one could harness the universities (mostly based in non-African countries) to bring their Egyptian interests and expertise. But, until the uptake of Second Life is MUCH better in Egypt and the rest of Africa, I do not think we will have a live community of 'modern-day Egyptians' adding their voices. There are currently 904 active users from Egypt inSL - according to March 2009 stats of Linden Lab. Less than 1% of the total users of SL. I would be really interested to know how many of the Egyption 'residents' inSL are involved in this, or have visited it - or commented on it.

My experience is that many content developers - not living in Africa - have an interest in Africa and Africa's people. These are inspired and interesting people and they play an important role to develop visual and immersive content for virtual worlds. However, we REALLY need to ALSO create an enabling access for Africans wishing to participate in their own country's augmentation. (This global exchange will result in the lively community and intercultural and cross-country dialogue needed to create authentic 'experiential' content in a virtual world).

Tony O'Driscoll speaks about the "power of presence" and I would argue it is both the build and the people that will generate this power - where worlds meet and people express themselves collectively. This is the way we will shape our global world.

The question that hangs in the air for me, is: "Are early-adopters prepared to invest pro-actively in the creation of bridges and get ICT infrastructure in place to level playing fields; OR are we as entrepreneurs now building silos to store digital goods and grow wealth in empire-building fashion?" Maybe we should learn from the Egyptians...

[Kate Miranda]

I think that the builds in Second Life are so interesting to look at that some new sim developers, and even some more experienced users forget that Second Life is still fundamentally driven by the same engine that drives the Social Web. It is powered by people's networks, by groups and by events that bring them together. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work in SL.