Factum has been working in the Valley of the Kings since 2001, as part of a long-term collaboration with the University of Basel under the aegis of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. Since 2009, this work has primarily been carried out through the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative (TNPI).

Some of the major achievements of Factum Foundation and the TNPI together with our collaborators in Basel, Egypt and elsewhere, are as follows:

• The rematerialisation of the tomb of Tutankhamen as a facsimile, which was given to the Egyptian people 
• The installation of Tutankhamen’s tomb in an underground building designed by the Tarek Waly Center for Architecture & Heritage next to Carter’s House at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings in 2014
• The scanning of the whole of the tomb of Seti, and the rematerialisation in facsimile form of one of its chambers, the Hall of Beauties, and of Seti’s sarcophagus
• A major exhibition held at the Antikenmuseum Basel: ‘Scanning Seti: the Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb’
• The restoration of Stoppelaëre House, a significant early work of the architect Hassan Fathy, and its repurposing as a 3D Scanning, Archiving, and Training Centre run by a fully Egyptian staff and with an Egyptian manager
• The establishment at the Centre of a training program which by 2022 will have seen ten students complete training in a range of recording technologies, providing them with skills which can be transferred to other projects within the Valley of the Kings and beyond
• The ongoing recording of over 8000 fragments from the tomb of Seti by the team at Stoppelaëre House

The TNPI is committed to promoting sustainable tourism, to ensuring the ongoing study and monitoring of tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and to establishing an autonomous Egyptian team with the technologies, skills and infrastructure to provide 3D recording services to the Ministry of Antiquities and the many foreign archaeological missions working in Luxor. In 2019, the Initiative received the official patronage of the Egyptian National Commission for UNESCO.

You can find out more about different elements of the TNPI and Factum Foundation’s work in Egypt by clicking on the links below. Alternatively, you can click here to take a virtual tour of the tomb of Seti, here to see images from the making of the Scanning Seti exhibition, or here to explore a high-resolution image viewer of the tomb of Tutankhamen.