by Marguerite Del Giudice
for National Geographic
The thing to understand about archaeology is that it's a science of destruction. The moment an ancient site is discovered, its physical condition immediately begins to deteriorate. Every dig removes a layer of the archaeological record that can never be replaced, and once humans are allowed to visit, with their hot breath and sweat and backpacks, walls start crumbling, pigments start flaking, and before you know it the site has to close down to "rest," or close for good—a victim of its own celebrity.
Now, a practice is gaining traction that may save us from inadvertently wrecking the very cultural treasures we most want to see: the creation of high-tech copies of ancient archaeological sites. We're not talking sized-down Las Vegas knockoffs of the Pyramids but forensically analyzed, 3-D copies so minutely detailed that the naked eye can't distinguish them from the originals.
Recently in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the most ambitious large-scale creation of this kind was unveiled: an exact replica of the 3,245-year-old tomb of King Tutankhamun, apparently so authentic that one Egyptologist in attendance (Salima Ikram from The American University in Cairo) actually wept when she saw the burial chamber.
"She had a very emotional reaction, even knowing she was in a copy—that was a great moment for me," said Adam Lowe, the British artist whose Madrid-based company, Factum Arte, made the replica as a philanthropic project; he donated his team's time and raised money to cover other costs. The $690,000 project took five years, beginning in 2009, when the team used state-of-the-art laser scanning and digitizing equipment to minutely "record" every aspect of the tomb.
