The Space of the Afterlife: Modelling Visible and Invisible Parts of New Kingdom Tombs at Saqqara

Abstract

The cluster of New Kingdom tombs at Saqqara and associated earlier and later burials excavated by the EES–Leiden–Turin mission, located in the southern portion of the Unas South Cemetery, was used to test a method to construct a comprehensive three-dimensional model of all the known visible and invisible spaces. All the structures above ground and the few spaces below ground that are currently accessible have recently been surveyed by photogrammetry and joined together into a single model. All the other parts, including a few structures above ground that were reburied after excavation and most of the currently inaccessible underground spaces, were geometrically modelled in 3D and attached to the photogrammetric data. The aim was to create a large-scale, composite, digital model of all the visible and invisible spaces recorded in the area, to be used as a research and dissemination tool.