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An extraordinary project between the Egyptian government and IBM has created Eternal Egypt, an unprecedented achievement that is now providing worldwide access to more than 5,000 years of Egyptian history.
Three years in the making, this partnership joins one of the world's oldest civilizations with the latest innovations in IBM technology. For the first time ever, visitors to the new Eternal Egypt Web site at www.eternalegypt.org can enter a virtual reconstruction of Tutankhamun's tomb as it looked the day Howard Carter discovered the chamber in 1922, or view the Lighthouse of Alexandria as it appeared before it was destroyed in the 14th century. Viewers can even examine the face of the Sphinx as it looked 2,000 years ago.
The Eternal Egypt project includes three individual components focused on the collections "inside the walls" of prominent museums all around Egypt, historic sites throughout the country and a virtual museum available to anyone anywhere in the world with Internet access. These
components are all based on an interconnected set of artifacts, places and characters that form a complex content database.
The museum inside the walls
The museum inside the walls has produced handheld Digital Guides that go beyond traditional audio-only devices to offer in-depth text, images and animation to increase understanding of the artifacts found in the museum. The Digital Guides enable visitors to take thematic tours of the museum or to explore it by room, artifact or picture. The audio narration for the Digital Guide is in three languages: English, French and Arabic.
The museum outside the walls
The second component of the project is the mobile-access guided tours of the Temple of Luxor and the Pyramids of Giza. Visitors can access the same information available on the handheld Digital Guides and the Eternal Egypt Web site, but through their cell phones while touring various locations. The technology allows visitors to take established tours or to download information to match their particular location.
The museum without walls
The centerpiece of the project is the Eternal Egypt Web site, which includes an innovative, interactive map and timeline to guide Eternal Egypt visitors through the country's cultural heritage, while a "Connections" function permits visitors to explore the complex relationships between the objects, places and characters of Egypt's past. The Web site is available in English, French and Arabic, with audio narration on demand.
With multimedia animations, 360-degree image sequences, panoramas of important locations,
virtual environments, three-dimensional scans, real-time photos from Web cameras and thousands of high-resolution images of ancient artifacts, Eternal Egypt weaves together more than five millennia of Egyptian culture and civilization and makes it available to people all over the world.
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