21st Century Digital Technologies meet Pharaonic Information Systems

The 134 giant sandstone columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall are a virtual petrified forest, each of them blanketed with thousands of hieroglyphic texts and hundreds of elaborately carved scenes representing kings and gods. This dazzling array of ancient information technology has long daunted visitors and even scholars attempting to decode this complex three-dimensional matrix of pharaonic history and culture. A fourth dimension is the passage of 33 centuries since the pharaohs Seti I and Ramesses II constructed the Great Hypostyle Hall around 1300 BCE. Since then, several pharaohs, High Priests, Medieval squatters and visitors from the Greco-Roman period down to today have literally left their marks with new inscriptions, graffiti and even iconoclastic vandalism of human and animal forms in the scenes and hieroglyphs. Using 3D modeling, digital photography and other high tech methods, the Hypostyle Hall Project is now recording and decoding this titanic ancient "puzzle box," revealing new insights into how the Egyptians created such artistic marvels and the subtle coded language of the hieroglyphic "software" that served as a magical operating system for this vast pharaonic machine.

Speaker: Dr. Peter Brand, University of Memphis

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