April 6, 2007 — The Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, will soon be granted new protection in an attempt to
control tourism, traffic and vandalism, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.
At the same time, Egyptian authorities are encouraging tourists to educate themselves about the tombs, and experience the art within them, without visiting the fragile sites in person.
A new visitor center opening later this month will feature a large plastic model of the valley, showing the location of each of its 63 tombs. Computers and large visual displays will also be available.
Offering tourists detailed
reproductions of the tombs' paintings as an alternative
to claustrophobic visits is another option favored by tourism officials.
Italian publisher De Agostini is working
on a project which aims to produce the most
complete digital archive of Egypt's ancient art and architecture.
New imaging technology can detect and even revive faded
paintings. The technology has yielded, for the first
time, accurate reproductions of the tombs'
scenes that were supposed to guide dead pharaohs through the afterlife.
"Corridor paintings on 10-meter-large, 4-meter-high (33 by 13 feet) walls can't be photographed with
conventional techniques," Sandro Vannini, the
photographer who devised the technology, told Discovery News.
"First of all, you need safe, 'cold'
light-emitting diodes to light up the tombs," Vannini explained.
Each photograph consists of four shots clarified by special noise-eliminating software. They can then be combined into a single image with "patient post-production work," Vannini said.
The result is what Vannini calls "impossible
visions:" room-sized wall paintings perfectly
portrayed in a single picture.
The pictures are published by De Agostini in Hawass's new book, "The Royal
Tombs of Thebes: A Gateway Through Eternity."
The first of a series of three books on the
Egyptian heritage, the book tells various versions of the most popular story
in ancient Egypt: the quest for immortality and the journey into the afterlife.
"We can see details impossible to detect during a
visit to the tombs," Antonio Scuderi,
director of editorial services at De Agostini, told Discovery News. "We discover gates guarded by
snakes, deserts and lakes of fire, damned
sinners, demons, rivers filled with drowned
ones, mummies waiting for resurrection. It is
really an amazing journey."
Located in a rocky valley on the
western bank of the Nile River near Luxor — the
ancient Thebes — the Valley of the Kings was
supposed to be the ultimate hidden burial.
For a period of nearly 500 years from the
16th to 11th century B.C., mummies of kings and
nobles were buried there into tombs cut from limestone.
