Virtual Giza

Last November, three American students studying in Egypt were arrested as they watched the protests leading up to parliamentary elections from a rooftop in Tahrir Square. That’s sure to freak out parents whose budding Egyptologists are lobbying for Cairo-based study abroad programs.

Rest easy, 'rents. With new 3-D software, developed by the French firm Dassault Systèmes, Harvard University, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, anyone with a computer can roam the famous Giza plateau and wander through its pyramids for an archeologist’s close-up look at the mummies, tombs, shafts, and artifacts as they look now--and might have looked when pharaohs were in residence--without worrying about ending up in a damp cell in Cairo.

Giza 3D was officially unveiled at the Boston museum earlier this week. 

Harvard Egyptology students are being offered innovative courses using an immersive 3D real-time virtual reconstruction of the Giza plateau, based on actual archeological data gathered by Harvard and MFA expeditions to Egypt in the first part of the 20th century.

Peter Der Manuelian, the Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, uses the immersive 3D experience to virtually transport his students to the Giza plateau itself and enhance the way ancient Egyptian history and archaeology are taught.

“The virtual environment provides a new means for learning about Egyptian civilization. The project has allowed my students and colleagues to visualize the Giza data and update and integrate them in a way that was not possible in the past,” stated Der Manuelian.

“Students transition from an environment where the instructor essentially drives the learning process to one where the students are immersed in the environment and drive the dialogue and discussion themselves,” added John Shaw, chair of Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “The technology associated with the project helps researchers portray their understanding of the past and show interpretations of the applicable science to students.”