IN THE PHARAOH'S TOMB

The Hidden Hours of the Sun

 

 

Starting 22 September 2006, the Basel Museum of Ancient Art is putting on a special exhibition called “In the Pharaoh's Tomb. The Hidden Hours of the Sun”. The centrepiece of this exhibition is the burial chamber of Thutmosis III. For this purpose a replica in its original size ( 14.6 m x 8.5 m ) is being constructed in the courtyard of the museum. The Madrid-based company Factum Arte is specialised on the digital reproduction of threatened, ancient monuments, particularly of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The burial chamber of Thutmosis III (1479-1426 BC), the greatest Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, is the first Egyptian royal tomb to be recorded and reproduced in this new laser-scan technology. The result is breathtaking. It is no surprise that the event attracted something around 150,000 viewers in Madrid and Edinburgh where the exhibition was previously on show.

 

The walls of the burial chamber are decorated with the Amduat, the famous netherworld book that describes the journey of the sun through the twelve hours of the night. The line-drawn figures and the texts in cursive hieroglyphs are executed in such a manner that, against the yellowish background of the walls, it creates the impression of a monumental unrolled papyrus. In a separate part of the exhibition, each hour of the sun's nocturnal journey is described in more detail and with the help of selected and impressively exhibited, Egyptian original pieces from the Kestner-Museum in Hanover and the Basel Museum of Ancient Art, that has co-designed the exhibition.