
Pharaoh Ramesses VI Tomb - EndXA
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=NeiMEZa9d93
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staycoolboy
That's just bonkers. So much writing on the walls! I wish the navigation was a
little more like a FPS and less like Myst III, but I had to keep reminding
myself: this isn't some level designer from 2000's, this is an actual tomb
designer vision from 5000 years ago. Just bizarre. I wonder what it would look
like illuminated by torchlight.

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nsxwolf
The gamer in me is a little disappointed by the real thing. I'm imagining Lara
Croft walking down this corridor, and then, turning around and walking right
back out.

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hutzlibu
Ah, but as Lara Croft you would find the secret switch to open up the real
temple ...

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qqj
Seeing it like this kills all mystic notions I had regarding these tombs. And
I don't mean this in a negative way, it sort of opens your eyes to what this
thing actually is - a conglomeration, made by many artists and engineers,
pouring their hearts and souls into building something to last a millennia.
Truly beautiful. That is until you remember it was all in service of some rich
guy who thought he was a god, and had them build this as a monument to his
supposed might. Ironically, his existence was entirely inconsequential, and
merely provided an excuse for the true geniuses of the time to tunnel their
talents into a magnum opus. They, together, were the true gods. Only true
ideals transcend time, and any individual thinking himself a god would be wise
to acknowledge that; you can become a god only if you let youself die and
embody an ideal fully. Ramesses missed the point so hard it's hilarious.

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ciarannolan

      I met a traveler from an antique land,
      Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
      Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
      Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
      And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
      Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
      And on the pedestal, these words appear:
      'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
      Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

~~~
mmazing
Ozymandias! My favorite poem.

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ciarannolan
It's a good one! This is a great video that goes with it too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts)

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gorkish
While I really respect the need to preserve these places as-is, I can't help
but wonder if these AR/VR/virtual presence platforms could be a great way to
give us a view into how these places may have looked when they were original
and all the walls were freshly carved and painted.

This coupled with the future potential for being able to offer sythesized
lightfields/holographic is ridiculously appealing to me.

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illuminated
Earlier discussion on the same topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042207)

~~~
rkagerer
The first comment there is a great list of other virtual tours. Anyone have a
list of these that work with VR (as in, with a Vive or Rift on your head).

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jlengrand
Stupid question but a serious one on my end : I would pay to get an actual
guide to go through this and teach me, just like I did on travel. Would you?

It seems like between the environment, Covid and the geopolitical situations
in many places it could be a way to still feel like I can enjoy some of the
priceless pieces the humans have created.

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technotony
Last year High Fidelity took one of these tombs and built a VR version that
they had an Egyptologist doing tours in. Was pretty cool, sad that they closed
the platform.

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jlengrand
Oh my that sounds exactly like what I mean. Someone that would carry me
through the magic of the place live :). I'll have a look if I can find some
resources about it thanks!

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acidburnNSA
I was impressed by this when it was posted a bit ago and am still impressed.

What's funny is that right after seeing this, my neighbors were selling their
house. I checked out the listing and they had this same technology for a
COVID-19 walkthrough linked right on the redfin page. They got two offers
within a week. Pretty shcmancy!

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einpoklum
If you turn around immediately, you'll notice the ancient Egyptian mailbox
next to the metal gate... and you can now write Ramesses a nice personal
letter: "I know what you're going through - I too often feel like I'm buried
under a ton of bricks." etc.

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praveen9920
First thought I had is, it is so beautiful, the lighting was perfect. I didn't
expect the details of texture, glyphs and color from few thousand year old
tomb. Pharaoh himself would be surprised to see his tomb like this.

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MRosenthal
Well... Google streetview blurred lot's of houses due to request by citizens.
But what happened here?
[https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=NeiMEZa9d93](https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=NeiMEZa9d93)

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MRosenthal
Sorry, the link did not work as expected. You have to look straight up to see
the blurred section.

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pkaye
Might be a blind spot in the panoramic camera.

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stfurkan
I have also posted this to the earlier discussion on the same topic. I am
writing the same comment here too :)

If you are interested, I am trying to build an open source database for places
with virtual tour.

Website: [https://gez.la](https://gez.la)

I am currently working on this alone. Anyone interested is welcome to help :)

[https://github.com/stfurkan/gez](https://github.com/stfurkan/gez)

~~~
andybak
You might find some interested people on the UK Museum Computer Group mailing
list: [https://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk/join/mcg-
community-d...](https://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk/join/mcg-community-
discussion-list/)

~~~
stfurkan
Thank you. I'll share the project there.

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programmertote
There are lots and lots of hieroglyph written on these walls. I'm assuming
that the researchers have deciphered what those means (Rosetta Stone)? I
really wish I could read what these means in English. That would really give a
great insights about what people (maybe the pharaohs and/or rich people who
can afford to build tombs like that) during that time thought was
important/noteworthy.

~~~
wl
As someone who has a decent grasp of Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs, I think your
enthusiasm for these texts would be destroyed by reading them. I know from
experience that the quickest way to bore someone I'm guiding through an
Egyptian exhibit is to start reading and translating inscriptions. The context
for much of what is written is more impenetrable than the language itself. You
pick up a lot of that context by necessity in learning the language but it
doesn't come through in translation.

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narag
So all those headless guys with their arms tied to the back all around the
caskets are some kind of boring groceries list?

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wl
Powerful rulers subdue their enemies. It's a common formula seen over and over
in various royal tombs and elsewhere. Sometimes, like in the case of the
Libyans in some periods, the enemies the king claims domination over haven't
been seen or heard from in generations. These kinds of inscriptions can tell
us interesting things about foreign relations sometimes, but it's not the type
of thing that's easy to extract.

As karatestomp states, there are far more interesting texts out there. The
Story of Sinuhe says more about the milieu it was written in than most
monumental or funerary inscriptions. It also happens to be one of the world's
earliest surviving literary masterpieces. The Story of Wenamun argues against
the common notion that the ancient Egyptians didn't have a sense of humor.

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narag
If you're still reading, thank you for the detailed explanation and
references. I hadn't heard of Wenamun. Sinuhe rings a bell, maybe a novel? I
have some digging to do :)

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EndXA
The buttons on the bottom left corner of the screen also allow you to explore
options such as changing the view type and selecting different floors.

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caiobegotti
It's truly impressive and jaw dropping but what's maddening to me is that what
you see in there is exactly how it is in real life, i.e. the walkways are just
like that and people can actually reach out and touch the walls. At least
based on my visits to Luxor, very few tombs have acrylic/glass wall
protections to prevent it but it's ridiculously common to see tourists in some
of the tombs doing that, it's sad and revolting as hell despite such great
beauty hypnotizing you.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
>At least based on my visits to Luxor, very few tombs have acrylic/glass wall
protections to prevent it but it's ridiculously common to see tourists in some
of the tombs doing that

I understand the sentiment, however I'm personally not in favour of modelling
everything in society to account for the lowest common denominator and
sterilizing everything in sight in response.

The issues you mention are nothing that couldn't be solved by advertising
hefty fines and enforcing them.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
You're still proposing to deal with the lowest common denominator, only in a
different way.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Indeed. A more direct, active way with the goal of not impacting those who
abide by the rules.

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throwaway_pdp09
Without saying which way is better, your claiming that fines are more 'direct'
than putting physical barriers in the way is blatantly not true, barriers
being the ultimate direct prevention.

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cmdshiftf4
I'm talking about direct retribution over prevention i.e. people visiting the
sites without touching anything aren't directly impacted by those who do
touch, however they're directly impacted by putting up glossy glass over those
same sites.

Those visiting the sites who do touch that which they're told not to face
direct retribution and serve as a warning to others not to do the same.

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kdamica
This is so cool and a great use of the technology. Despite the fixed camera,
the scene feels textured and alive.

I'd love it if there was a way to overlay translations of the hieroglyphics so
I could get a sense of what they chose to write about here.

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A4ET8a8uTh0
That was the first time I thought I may not need to visit a place in person (
not an expert; seeing it in person would be unlilely to yield a different
reaction / insights ). Maybe virtual tourism could be a thing for sites like
these.

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FigmentEngine
You should see his Emacs Tomb...

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robotresearcher
Beautiful and fascinating site.

The artifacts of the capture and rendering process strike me as deeply weird -
they do funny things to my brain as I navigate around. I've done some
photogrammetry so I understand why they exist - they have chosen to never show
the holes in the mesh - but I've never seen exactly this aesthetic effect.
Maybe someone could use this as a video effect like Radiohead did for lidar
point clouds a tech generation ago.

[https://youtu.be/8nTFjVm9sTQ](https://youtu.be/8nTFjVm9sTQ) (2008)

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mesozoic
This is really cool! It would be awesome if there was an automatic way to
export something like this to a map you can load in some high res FPS like
half life 2 or a newer one.

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Abishek_Muthian
This is awesome.

I would like an option to toggle 'How it looked like when it was constructed'
which shows rendered image of the historical architecture in its pristine
condition[1]. Like, Pyramid's white limestone finish.

[1][https://needgap.com/problems/55-how-ancient-architectures-
lo...](https://needgap.com/problems/55-how-ancient-architectures-looked-like-
via-vr-architecture-vr)

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monadic2
I can’t be the only person who finds this kind of presentation hard to
navigate on a phone. It’s also why I go to my desktop to use google street
view.... ideally it would degrade to something more approachable with swiping
gestures and/or visual clues to controls.

Nonetheless, this is extremely cool (no knock on this specific project for the
above problems) and I’m looking forward to poking around tonight.

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indosauros
Is there a version of this that is annotated?

For example a few steps in are some niches on the wall -- I half expected a
popup explaining their purpose

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edeion
This is a duplicate from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042207)
The top comment there has many interesting links to other monuments that have
been similarly captured.

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noisy_boy
I wonder if the motif of the eagle with its wings spread originated from
around this time. In case you miss it, look up at the doorways to the levels;
truly beautiful work there and very well preserved (probably due to it being
out of normal reach).

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Jaruzel
There's more 3D places built with Matterport at:
[https://go.matterport.com/destinations.html](https://go.matterport.com/destinations.html)

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pierrebai
Was impressed, until I got to the very end, were you see multiple depictions
of people being beheaded. (With blood fountains from their neck.) You then
remember that pharaohs were not gentle people.

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rkagerer
Incredible :-). Though I can't help but feel those wooden light-boxes take
away from the grandness of it. They look like something hammered together by a
weekend hobbyist.

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adelHBN
This was the coolest thing I've ever seen. I shared it with my Egyptian
relatives, and they loved it. Thank you so much for posting this.

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lihaciudaniel
These drawing make them look like Gigantic people, don't hate me but I think
they are the one who built the pyramids

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trm42
Ha, it's awesome how much further we have gotten from the times of Quicktime
VR! So much of details and clarity.

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tbabej
Middle button to zoom. It is worth it to have a closer look at those walls
with millenia-old artwork.

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seanbsamson
Wow! This is by far the best thing I've seen this year. Excellent work! Thank
you

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n_o_u
I love digital explorations like this, but the step length of these google
maps style walkthroughs drive me insane. I often want to look at the detail of
something that happens to be in between two steps, and it's just not possible.

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noncoml
"Remember me!"

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fortran77
Does he have an emacs tomb?

