The exhibition
Scanning Seti: The Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb opened last week at the
Antikenmuseum Basel and will remain on view until May 6th, 2018.
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Depth map image of the priest Iounmoutef greeting Seti I
[Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
The rock-cut tomb of Pharaoh Seti I is one of the most fascinating burials in the Valley of the Kings. When Giovanni Battista Belzoni discovered it in 1817, more than 3000 years after the pharaoh's death, he extolled the immaculate preservation of its wall decorations.
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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 [Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
Today, because of looting, improperly conducted excavations, mass tourism and geological movements, it is in a pitiful state.
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| Belzoni´s Hall of Beauties [Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
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| The Facsimile of the Hall of Beauties [Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
The exhibition features a full recreation of the Hall of Beauties as it looked in 1817 based on Giovanni Battista Belzoni´s famous watercolours. The public can also walk through a 1:1 facsimiles of rooms I and J.
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| The Facsimile of Room J [Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Seti’s sarcophagus. The original has been in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London since 1824 but this facsimile allows to be seen for the first time in the context of the rest of the tomb.
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| Facsimile of the Sarcophagus [Credit: © Factum Foundation, Madrid] |
These replicas incorporate the facsimiles of fragments removed from the original tomb in the XIX century and now preserved at the Louvre, the British Museum, the Archaeological Museum in Florence, and the Pergamon Museum.
Click here to read a
full report on work carried-out in 2016 in Egypt.
Source: Factum Foundation [November 02, 2017]
