Work on the Facsimile of Tutankhamun
Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

The  Facsimile of the tomb of Tutankhamun is complete and in storage in Madrid. It was completed at the end of 2010 and was due to have been installed in Egypt in early 2011. As a result of the changes that are happening there the University of Basel, Factum Arte and the Friends of the Royal Tombs are storing the tomb until it can be sent and erected in Egypt. We hope this can happen soon and in a way that benefits the people of Egypt while helping conserve the original site.

The High resolution recording and production of an exact facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun is part of a major initiative by the Supreme Council of Antiquities to preserve the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The project is being run by the University of Basel with permission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The agreement covers the tombs of Seti I, Nefertari and Tutankhamun.

The work is being organised by The Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt (a Swiss foundation), The Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation (a Spanish foundation) and Factum Arte. All the work to record and make the facsimiles has been carried out by Factum Arte.

The Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation's hosts the full report at www.technologyinconservation.org

Recording the tomb
To learn more about the process of recording of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, click here.

Making the facsimile
After recording, the processing of data and production of the tomb's facsimile was carried out in Factum Arte's warehouse, Madrid. To view the making of the facsimile of the tomb and sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, click here.

Tutankhamun's South Wall: recovering the missing pieces
Working with assistance from the Griffith Institute in Oxford, who supplied a high resolution file of Harry Burton's photograph of a fragment removed from the south wall of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Factum Arte has reconstructed it's colour. All colour information is based on the high resolution recordings made in the tomb. To view the process, click here.

Navigator
A high-resolution image browser is being prepared to navigate through the high resolution photographic data scanned at the tomb. To learn more about the navigator, click here.

Further documentation

To see the english version of the full report on the scanning of the tomb of Tutankhamun for the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), click here.
To see the arabic version of the full report on the scanning of the tomb of Tutankhamun for the SCA, click here.