relief "Portrait of Heyar"
course site
120°75′ east longitude, 30°28′ north latitude, Zhejiang University, China;
71°05′ west longitude, 42°19′ north latitude, Harvard University, United States;
31°07′ east longitude, 29°58′ north latitude, Egypt , Giza.
These three coordinates on the earth are integrated in an ancient Egyptian course that starts at 10:30 tonight Beijing time.
40 students in the two classrooms of Harvard University and Zhejiang University will share the " Giza Pyramids : Technology, Archaeology and History" course taught by Peter de Manuel, a professor of Egyptology at Harvard University in more than an hour through online high-tech equipment.
When each student wears a VR (virtual reality) helmet, they will simultaneously "airborne" to the pyramids of Giza built 4,500 years ago.
This is also the first Harvard VR course introduced by Zhejiang University in the country.
The research essence of the two professors
is all in this class
Egyptian archaeology course. It cannot be opened without the accumulation of ancient Egyptian field data and long-term in-depth research.
. Harvard University was able to create this archaeological course. I would like to thank two professors:
. One was his senior professor, Professor George Andrew Lesner (1867~1942), who was an important founder of modern archaeology.
When Professor Lesner was studying for his undergraduate degree at Harvard University, he was obsessed with Semitic. During his study in Germany, he met the great Egyptian archaeological ox Adolf Elmon and his student Cott Site, and studied ancient Egyptian.
Who knows that after three years of studying abroad, Lesner, who was about to return to Harvard to teach, was told by the school that "I don't have the money to support you in this position." Seeing that he was about to be unemployed, Lesner was invited by his German colleagues to work in Egypt. This is a very good job, and Lesner has switched jobs.
In Egypt, Lesner met a noble man, Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hurst. At that time, she was looking for archaeological excavation projects to do angel investments, and she invested in Lesner.
Although he went through a series of twists and turns later, Professor Lesner finally entered the archaeological work in the pyramids of Giza. It lasted for 45 years since 1902 until his death.
During this period, he implemented standardized and meticulous information recording methods, and all archaeological discoveries were recorded in various ways, including: archive records of 13,810 tombs and monuments in
html; scans of 34,000 black and white photos of glass negatives; archive records of 21,163 unearthed cultural relics; 2,800 Giza archaeological investigation records; 3,105 pages of archaeological team diary; 10,000 archaeological drawings and work plans; 7,000 sketches; 400 Giza archaeological related books; and 4,463 pages of unpublished Lesner manuscripts.Another professor is Professor Pete who gave a live lecture at Harvard University. It is said that this interesting old man has raised five cats - these cats also appeared in AR tests related to this course to varying degrees.
Professor Pitt once described how he started Egyptian archaeology:
He first listened to an ancient Egypt course in the fourth grade;
When he was a teenager, he often visited and studied at the Boston Museum of Art (MFA).
Later, he found an expert at Harvard University who studied Egyptian hieroglyphs and Ancient Egyptian history , and "spooned the professor and asked questions like a piece of plaster and learned a full set of knowledge."
1987 Professor Pitt served as director of the Boston Museum of Art. In 2000, he received funding from the Mellon Foundation to digitize all archaeological data in Giza.
Today, all the content that students in two universities and two classrooms can learn comes from here.
Immersive new perspective
can better discover the characteristics of ancient Egyptian art creation
In this joint course from Harvard-Zhejiang University, the scenes that students see in VR will never be seen in Giza today. For example, at the site of the cemetery in the pyramids of Giza, there was only one hole on the ground of the Merib cemetery, which was excavated in 1842. The front facade of the tomb is now stored in the Berlin Museum. Because when Giza was excavated in its early days, it was carried out by each country in its respective areas, many cultural relics were scattered in museums of each country.
But in VR content, scientists accurately restored the original appearance of this tomb based on Professor Lesner's archaeological records. At that moment, time and space were frozen in the early 20th century.
VR not only has the complete building of the tomb, but also allows you to carefully see the objects in the tomb - reliefs, murals, furniture... Students can click on any of them, and the 3D model of the object will pop up accordingly and can rotate as you wish to observe at all angles. There are also many reliefs and murals in the tomb chamber, which are exactly the same as the actual life in Egypt thousands of years ago.
has a "Portrait of Heyar", taken from a door of Heyar's tomb, about 2778 BC to 2723 BC. Maybe you have seen this famous relief from many documentaries and picture materials. At first glance, you may feel that the expression is strange, so that the Egyptians in the murals or reliefs look so strangely flat and twisted, such as both feet are seen from the angle of the inner ankle, as if they have two left feet.
But by clicking to enlarge and 360 degrees of rotation, under more luxurious observation conditions, you will slowly understand the creative rules of Egyptian art . They follow the principle of expressing everything entering the picture absolutely clearly. It is not good-looking or not good-looking, but is complete and incomplete, and unclear -
So the contour of a person's head is most clearly seen from the side, and the painter expresses it from the side; the shoulders and chest of the body are most clearly seen from the front, and the arms and legs are more clearly seen from the side, so connect them at their respective angles.
A large number of such details can be watched and learned slowly in VR course content.
The key is that these are not just a rich visual feast, but content that is truly based on powerful first-hand verification materials. What’s more interesting is that in the VR course, Mr. Lesner, who has already gone to another world, will also appear strongly and "personally" guide the students in the 21st century.
Currently, there are 20 students taking this course at Zhejiang University, covering undergraduate, master and doctoral programs. In addition to majors such as archaeology, literature and arts, students in other majors such as architecture, computer science, management, and tourism can also take it.
Next, due to the characteristics of time difference and VR technology, this course will break through the space-time concept of traditional courses, allowing teachers and students to join Harvard University's virtual classrooms in their own convenient space (home and dormitory).
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