Hilary Wilson on…The next best thing

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 151

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Replicas of Egyptian temples and tombs offered a more immersive or emotional experience than contemporary museum exhibits…

An outstanding exhibit at the newly opened GEM is a rendition of the Beni Hasan tomb chapel of Khnumhotep II. With vivid scenes of everyday life digitally recreated and animated, this is the latest example in a long tradition of 3-D replicas of Egyptian monuments.

A 3-D replica of the Beni Hasan tomb chapel of Khnumhotep II, which has recently opened at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), Cairo. Image: Lucia Gahlin

KV17 Sety I

In 1821, Giovanni Belzoni’s London exhibition of Sety I’s tomb (KV17), which he had discovered four years earlier, drew huge crowds. Its success fed the popular enthusiasm known as Egyptomania, and the exhibit offered an accessible view of ancient Egypt, sparking a desire to see the real thing.

The replicas were created from watercolours painted by Belzoni and his epigrapher Alessandro Ricci on to plaster casts made from squeezes taken directly from the tomb walls. This process caused considerable damage to the reliefs by degrading the plaster and stripping colour. Yet more damage, both accidental and deliberate, was caused by the increasing number of tourists, and the associated environmental changes caused by the very presence of visitors in the tomb, leading to further deterioration. From the late 1980s, KV17 was closed to the public, so to provide access to what was one of the most beautifully decorated of Egyptian tombs, the construction of an exact replica was proposed.

Bullock’s Museum – also called the Egyptian Hall – in London, the venue of Belzoni’s 1821 exhibition. Image: T H Shepherd,1815, Wellcome Collection

A detail from Belzoni’s ‘Section of the tomb of Samethis in Thebes’ showing his reconstructions of the Sety I tomb paintings. Image: G Belzoni (1820) *Plates illustrative of the researches and operations of G. Belzoni in Egypt and Nubia*; The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

The 1851 Great Exhibition

Replicas of Egyptian temples and tombs offered a more immersive or emotional experience than contemporary museum exhibits, and attracted visitors to major cultural events. The Great Exhibition of 1851, described as ‘a centre of popular enlightenment’, included replicas of monuments which visitors ‘have not had an opportunity of beholding with their own eyes’. The Egyptian Court was dominated by gigantic replicas of the Abu Simbel colossi, based on plaster casts made for Robert Hay, and was approached through an avenue of sphinxes. Photographs taken when the Crystal Palace was relocated to Sydenham in 1854 show what a magazine article called ‘condensed compilations’ of architectural styles from different eras. Despite having to be rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1866, the Egyptian Court continued to draw visitors for another 50 years.

Replicas of the colossi of Ramesses II from Abu Simbel in the Egyptian Court of the Great Exhibition, 1851. Image: The Crystal Palace Sydenham’, auction catalogue, 1911.

Paris

At the 1867 Paris World Fair, the Egyptian Pavilion designed by Auguste Mariette and modelled on Philae, reflected the depth of French interest in ancient Egypt. The main hall, decorated in New Kingdom style, contained display cases showing genuine artefacts, mostly from Mariette’s own excavations. At its heart was ‘an exact copy of the tomb of the poor Kaa, inhabitant of Memphis under the Fifth Dynasty’. The exhibit also reproduced many scenes from the tombs of Ti and Ptahhotep, discovered by Mariette in 1865, the whole being envisaged as ‘a living lesson in archaeology’, providing ‘a complete reproduction of the life of the Egyptians of… antiquity’.

Despite the pavilion’s attractive exterior, based on the Dendera Temple, the Egyptian exhibit at the Paris Expo of 1900 was not so well-received. Grainy images of the tomb described as the ‘Serdab of Ti’, show a room lined with reproduction tomb reliefs. At the centre are seated statues of ‘Ti and his wife’ which are clearly based on those of Rahotep and Nofret from Meidum. A contemporary review claimed the exhibit ‘served only to inspire regret by evoking the image of the beautiful things that could have been reconstructed’.

The ‘Serdab of the Mastaba of Ti’ (above) in the Egyptian pavilion at the 1900 Paris Expo contained statues that bore no resemblance to Ti’s standing statue (below), which is now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Image: *L’Exposition Universelle de 1900*

Image: Djehouty, CC BY 4.0 via Wikicommons

Reproducing Nefertari

QV66, the tomb of Ramesses II’s wife Nefertari, was discovered in 1904 by Ernesto Schiaparelli, Director of the Museo Egizio, Turin, and it has been the subject of several replicas. Though thoroughly looted in antiquity, the tomb is known as ‘Egypt’s Sistine Chapel’ because of its exquisite wall paintings. Schiaparelli commissioned a 1:10 scale 3-D model of the tomb, which was displayed in Turin alongside the fragmentary lid of Nefertari’s sarcophagus, and scraps of her burial furniture. This accurate model served as a reference for conservators when, in 1986, some 40 years after QV66 was closed over fears for its preservation, the Getty Conservation Institute began the inspection, documentation, and conservation of the tomb. The Getty Museum’s exhibition (1992) included a full-scale photographic replica, illustrating the importance of conservation.

Model of Nefertari’s tomb (QV66) commissioned by Schiaparelli for the Museo Egizio, Turin. Image: Museo Egizio, Turin

Two similar full-size replicas of QV66 and TT96 (Sennefer), the latter famous for its grapevine ceiling decoration, are displayed in the Egyptian Gallery of the Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France. The paintings were recreated by surface photographic transfers, a process developed for the reproduction of the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux. When the Museo Egizio underwent substantial renovation, Schiaparelli’s model featured in exhibitions in European and US venues, including Fort Worth and Denver, but has recently returned to Turin. After its conservation, tourist access to the tomb itself was severely restricted, and, since its permanent closure in 2024, 3-D replicas are the most accessible way in which this beautiful monument may be experienced.

Modern technology

Rapid developments in digital technology, including photogrammetry, laser scanning, and 3-D printing, continue to improve the efficiency and quality of data acquisition and the creation of ever more accurate models. In 2004, the Factum Arte workshop created a full-scale replica of the tomb of Thutmose III (KV34) for the National Archaeological Museum, Madrid. As the central feature of the exhibition Immortal Pharaoh, the facsimile toured Europe and the USA before being installed in Bolton Museum, near Manchester, in 2019.

The restored relief of underworld deities depicted in the burial chamber of QV66 (left); the same scene, as depicted Schiaparelli’s model (middle); and in the full-scale replica in Le Mans (right). Images: Onceinawhile, CC BY 4.0 via Wikicommons (left); Hilary Wilson (centre & right)

The success of the KV34 exhibit led to the foundation of the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative (TNPI), to record in digital form more tombs considered to be under threat, with a view to creating exact replicas of them. Factum Arte’s 3-D facsimile of Tutankhamun’s tomb (KV62) was installed in 2014 next to the Carter House visitor centre, Luxor, and has become a major tourist attraction. There are also several exhibitions that recreate KV62 using replicas that are currently on tour around the world.

The replica burial chamber of Thutmose III, now in Bolton, offers a close-up view of one of the most significant but difficult to access tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Image: Sarah Griffiths

Nearly 30 years after it was first proposed, in 2020 the TNPI unveiled a facsimile of the Tomb of Sety I at the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. The replica will eventually be installed in the Carter House visitor centre near the Valley of the Kings. Based on the comprehensive digital survey of the tomb and its elements held in museums outside Egypt – notably the alabaster sarcophagus from the Soane Museum, London – this demonstrates the progress made in 3-D technology since Belzoni’s day.

While photomontages, videos, and ‘virtual walk-throughs’ are becoming more sophisticated, a full-scale physical replica can provide an experience much closer to reality. Some critics label these projects as soulless fakes, but to others they represent the preservation of Egypt’s cultural heritage and are the next best thing to visiting the monuments themselves.