Show HN: The Tomb of SETI I and Netherworld Texts Virtual Tour

2 points

2 years ago

The Netherworld texts on the walls of the Tomb of Seti I are worth a deeper read. They describe the journey of Ra through the 12 hours of the night and begin outward from the burial chamber to the entrance of the tomb.

I 3d scanned this tomb and put together the guided virtual tour. The tomb also has a much deeper corridor beneath the burial chamber that still hasn't been fully excavated.

The texts are from the Book of the Gates, the Amduat, the Litany of Ra, the Opening of the Mouth, and the Book of the Heavenly Cow. People visit tombs like these without the opportunity to understand the texts and paintings on their walls because ancient Egyptian religion is a little more inaccessible.

In researching the walls, I used Hornung's study from 1991 and the Darnells' recent compilation of the Netherworld texts, as well as the Theban Mapping Project and a few other books.

I included photogrammetry of a few artifacts from various museums around the world with artifacts discovered in the tomb or relevant to Seti I -- though there's still a missing column face removed by Lepsius and now in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

I built the virtual tour with Three.js and captured with Polycam and Insta360, and photogrammetry of the full tomb is on Sketchfab -- and coming to a VR headset soon. I left off many of the vfx from earlier tombs because they caused performance issues--I'll add these in the VR build.

And most importantly, extra thanks to the Matterport team that encouraged exploring cinematic mode work with the virtual tours! Thanks for any feedback.

Related: Photogrammetry of Tomb of Seti I: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-tomb-of-seti-i-valley-of... Statue of Seti I: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/statue-of-seti-i-8784c1f62a4...