Recreating the East Wall of the Hall of Offerings in Luxor Temple c. 1930, presented in 3D

Created by the Epigraphic Survey

The 3D model of the East Wall of the Hall of Offerings in Luxor Temple circa 1930 is a testament to how archival film negatives can be integrated with more recent digital images to reconstruct how a monument would have appeared in the past. 

The model built in Agisoft Metashape blends archival photographs taken by French Egyptologist Alexandre Moret between 1914-1937 with the digital documentation of the Epigraphic Survey from 2018. This hybrid experiment was undertaken during the 2019/20 season by photographer Owen Murray, with the help of archivists Alain & Emmanuelle Arnaudiès and the archives of the Collège de France. 

Although Moret's photographs provide an almost complete coverage of the entire wall, there was insufficient overlap between them to produce enough object geometry for a 3D model. 

Therefore, the 27 B&W archival photographs were complemented with 168 digital images, which were taken with a series of 6 coded targets and measured for scale-bar calibration in Metashape. Combining the archival and digital photographs together not only allowed the proper alignment and rectification of the film photographs, but also provided sufficient information to generate a dense cloud and then mesh, onto which Moret's archival photographs were applied as the texturing source. 

After building the model, an orthomosaic was extracted from it, with the best possible photograph/s used for each scene on the wall. 

For a more detailed insight into this project, you can read photographer Owen Murray’s article here.

East Wall of the Hall of Offerings c. 1930, Luxor Temple (Sketchfab model created by the Epigraphic Survey)

To see the Epigraphic Survey’s other 3D models, visit their Sketchfab page.