From the safety and security of your own home, you can walk where the ancient Egyptians walked. And oh, it’s such a good thing.
Take a tour of the 5,000-year-old tomb of ancient Egyptian Queen Meresankh III by clicking on the image below or use this link: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=d42fuVA21To
It works sort of like Google Street View–you click to scoot through the tomb, area by area; you can also use your mouse to spin around and look at the walls.
Those dots you see on the image above give you little pop-ups with additional information about the art and hieroglyphics or factoids about the tomb itself.
The technology, 3D modelling, was done by Harvard University. They have lots more great tomb-ish information on their Giza Project website.
Here’s an excellent article by The Guardian that gives you lots of information about this virtual tour. The Guardian article also includes three other links to virtual tours: the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Barquq, The Coptic Red Monastery and the Ben Erza synagogue.
Thank you to our science writer, Monique Conrod, for discovering this tomb (pun intended) so we could share it with you. And huge thanks to artist Niall Eccles for the beautiful artwork that accompanies this post. I like to think that the panda and the bird have just toured Meresankh’s place and are relaxing in the sun, chatting about it. They’re not socially distancing but, um, they’re animals–and also illustrations–so it’s okay.
Please do check out (and purchase) Hilary Leung‘s other wonderful children’s books, here. Last but not least, thank you to Scholastic Canada for letting us share this artwork. You are awesome.
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