Three Ancient Egyptian Coffins at Harvard University

Written by Peter Der Manuelian, Barbara Bell Professor of Egyptology, and Director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East at Harvard University

Coffin of Pa-di-mut, painted cartonnage (linen and plaster), Dynasty 22, 945-712 BC (All photos curtesy of Peter Der Manuelian)

Some of our Egyptological work at Harvard centers around 3D modeling as a research and teaching tool, digital epigraphy, graphic design and book production. Our Giza Project at Harvard, now in its twentieth year, aims to gather all the archaeological activity around the famous Giza Pyramids, just west of modern Cairo, and cross-reference it intelligently online for scholars, students, and the general public. In recent years, and in collaboration with Dassault Systèmes, ICONEM, and Archimedes Digital, we have added 3D modeling of the Giza Plateau to our approach.

At the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (formerly known as the Harvard Semitic Museum), we work to enhance our exhibits with virtual reality, augmented reality and other emerging technologies in an effort to make the ancient world more accessible (see, for example, “Dreaming the Sphinx,” a free app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store). As I write this, with the COVID-19 virus situation drastically affecting the world, universities and museums are rethinking how to fulfill their missions as well.

Students enjoy the free augmented reality app “Dreaming the Sphinx.”

One of our Sketchfab collections is called “Pyramid Schemes”, which gathers hundreds of downloadable 3D models of Egyptian antiquities, from our Museum and others, for study and enjoyment. 

We use these models for a “virtual curation” assignment, where Harvard undergraduates choose their objects, then build a virtual museum gallery (in Unity or Cinema 4D), and finally they must describe the story they are trying to tell about ancient Egypt.

Sample of the Egyptian antiquities on the “Pyramid Schemes” Sketchfab collections page.

The Egyptian Coffins Project

In January 2020, at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, we devoted a week between semesters to comprehensive documentation of our three mummy cases. They belong to three Egyptians employed in Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak: two men (Pa-di-mut, a priest and metal engraver, and Ankh-khonsu, a doorkeeper) and one woman (Mut-iy-iy, a singer), all from Dynasty 22 (about 945–712 BC). They were excavated by Theodore Davis and Percy Newberry in 1901 and subsequently donated to our Museum. No bodies accompanied the coffins to America. Although they have been on view for some time, this was a rare opportunity, thanks to a Harvard Dean’s Competitive Fund grant, to study them in detail. Most had not been opened in decades, and in one case we had no idea if there was decoration inside the coffin or not.

Opening the vitrine with the coffins of Mut-iy-iy and Ankh-khonsu (from left to right: Dennis Piechota, Adam Aja, Adam Middleton, Joe Greene).

In addition to professional photography, measurements, pigment and residue analysis, and wood sampling, we included photogrammetry and 3D scanning in our workflow. The goal was to create interactive 3D models of the coffins, inside and out, for Sketchfab, and eventually for an interactive exhibit for the visiting public and world community. We used an Artec Leo scanner for the scanning, and a Sony RX100 VI camera for the hundreds of photos that went into Agisoft Metashape for processing.

The Egyptian Coffins Project

Here is a three-minute video summary to demonstrate the project:

Challenges

The greatest challenge for us was the careful handling of these fragile and heavy coffins, for we needed to lift and turn them in order to documents tops, sides, undersides, and bottoms. Day by day, a team of twelve specialists compiled their documentation and took their samples, in a complex arrangement of choreography: coffins rolling in from the gallery (which had become a temporary photo studio), lids turning over, bottoms being scanned and photographed, etc. All went smoothly, and the professional team members never got in each other’s way, despite the time pressure, the differing needs of everyone’s equipment, and the fragility of the materials.

Jessica Gebhard and Madeline Liberman measure one of the coffin lids.

There were four batches of images for each coffin: lid exterior, lid interior, bottom interior, and bottom exterior. Once these images were processed, our colleague from Indiana University, Bloomington, Mohamed Abd el-aziz, used Agisoft Metashape, Zbrush, Xnormal, and 3D Studio Max to merge the various pieces together, remove the unwanted backgrounds, decimate the meshes, and animate the coffins, so that the lids move up and down, exposing the decoration of the interior. The results, with all three coffins side by side, may be viewed here:

 

Individually, viewers can also see the coffins one by one here:

Sketchfab provided a convenient way to upload the models for instant and interactive viewing. Being able to rotate the coffins, stop and start the animation, and even “climb inside” are all welcome and useful features. Since museum objects are often difficult to access up close, Sketchfab provided an excellent virtual display. In our case, this is particularly welcome since two of our three coffins, for lack of gallery space, are displayed against a wall, which means one cannot view all sides except on Sketchfab. 

Taking these technologies one step further, we added the coffins project, and other objects, to our virtual tour of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. We wanted to give users virtual, in additon to physical, access to our building, a feature that the recent COVID-19 virus has made all the more relevant and necessary. 

The interactive 3D model of our Museum is available on our website home page. The model, created with a Matterport camera, uses a very versatile format that is perhaps familiar to visitors from real estate websites. It begins with a “dollhouse” view of the Museum, and then the visitor can “jump” inside the building. The controls are down at the lower left; you can click “play” for an auto-run tour through the museum, or you can navigate and look around freely yourself. And selected objects have “hot spots” that you can click on. These show additional text, photos, and even embed rotatable 3D models of the objects. It’s almost like taking them out the display cases. Examples include our three Egyptian mummy coffins on the second floor, and our Assyrian palace reliefs on the third floor.  Users can jump from floor to floor easily, without even having to negotiate the stairs!

The coffin lids are now back in place on their respective coffin bottoms in the gallery, obscuring the interiors, which remain visible on Sketchfab. And finally, by zooming or manipulating the angle of the light source in Sketchfab (option key on Mac; alt key on PC), users can highlight areas for detailed views that are impossible in the gallery.

Lessons Learned

We found it relatively easy to produce the photography for photogrammetry work, with anywhere between 300 and 500 images per coffin section (lid, bottom, interior, exterior, etc.). Using the Artec Leo portable 3D scanner is liberating, since it requires neither cables nor tethering to a computer, and the screen on the device provides instant feedback. Nevertheless, it proved extremely useful to check the scans on a nearby laptop during the course of the scanning, like “dailies” on a movie set. We were able to rescan areas missed and ensure that we had complete coverage. For sharp details and excellent color reproduction, the photogrammetry images worked best. For the underlying geometry, the Artec Leo is the way to go. Good file-naming systems, and accurately named folders and subfolders helped us keep the thousands of images organized.

Next Steps

Our next step is to take these 3D models and create an interactive exhibit, with a wall monitor in the gallery showing the animation, and an app or website (beyond our virtual museum tour) that provides more information. For example, “annotating” the coffins, with popup texts translating the hieroglyphic inscriptions, or identifying the deities and describing the ritual scenes taking place, is certainly on our list. Beyond this, exciting augmented reality applications await. Users could virtually take the coffin out of its display case, lift up the lid and enjoy a walk-through or flyover of the interior. Using an Insta360 One X camera, we have already simulated such experiences, and a practice run can be seen here:

 

On the scholarly front, we hope to gather the scientific papers from all our collaborators into a single monograph on the three coffins, to be published in the series Harvard Egyptological Studies.

We also hope to reveal more of what lies under the resinous “goo” in the bottom interior of Ankh-khonsu’s coffin. The underlying painting of the god Re-Horakhty, lord of the Two Lands” standing on a “nebu” sign and surrounded by serpents, needs clarification and, eventually, some digital epigraphy.

First experiments with DStretch on the bottom interior of the coffin of Ankh-khonsu, showing the figure of Re-Horakhty. (Normal view photo by Frank Graham).

The potential for access to these ancient monuments is growing thanks to immersive 3D, VR, AR, and mixed reality technologies. In archaeology, however, where reconstructions are concerned, it is important to note the source documentation. We look forward to expanding the teaching and research potential of these new tools.

Our thanks

The team working on the Coffins Project consisted of

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

Peter Der Manuelian, Director

Joseph A. Greene, Deputy Director and Curator

Adam Aja, Assistant Curator of Collections

Adam Middleton, Museum Coordinator

Conservators

Dennis Piechota, Archaeological Conservation

Jane Drake Piechota, Archaeological Conservation 

Photographer

Frank Graham, Exhibit Services and PhotoGraphics

Straus Center for Conservation, Harvard Art Museums

Katherine Eremin, Patricia Cornwell Senior Conservation Scientist

Kate Smith, Conservator of Paintings and Head of Paintings Lab (pigment)

Georgina Raynor, Associate Conservation Scientist (pigment, XRF)

Institute of Archaeology, University College, London 

Margaret Serpico, Honorary Research Associate (residue analysis)

Wood analysis

Michaela Schmull, Director of Collections Harvard University Herbaria and Libraries

Madelynn von Baeyer, Research Fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria

Iconography studies

Cynthia May Sheikholeslami, Cairo

Students and Volunteer Interns

Madeline Liberman (Columbia University)

Eden Piacicelli, Lauren Wyman, Marija Tomoshevska, Jessica Gebhard

The Coffins Project team behind the coffin base of Ankh-khonsu.