Musée du Louvre, Snapchat Partner to Render Ancient Egypt Using AR

Summary:
• Dubbed "Egypt Augmented," the exhibition brings to life Ancient Egypt, with 3D display of items with intricate details brought to life.

Musée du Louvre, the iconic Paris-based museum, has teamed up with Snap Inc.’s (Snapchat) augmented reality (AR) studio to launch a journey through Ancient Egypt, rendered in 3D. “Egypt Augmented,” which launches today, brings a fun and interactive way to learn about Ancient Egypt. The team behind it describes it as a new educational resource with the potential to revolutionise the way the world studies Ancient Egypt.

Travel through time to Ancient Egypt in 3D

The four “Egypt Augmented” experiences are centred on three displays inside the museum’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities and one display in the Cour Carrée, an outdoor courtyard. The entire experience is a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs using the famous Rosetta Stone by archaeologist Jean-François Champollion.

The exhibition has also availed a free Face Lens feature to Snapchat users all around the world. This feature enables Snapchat users to experience life as an ancient Egyptian, as it treats them to 3D recreations of funerary masks similar to those on display at the Louvre.

Bringing the past to life

All of the selected pieces’ original forms, materials, colours, and embellishments have faded away with time, leaving nearly bare stone. However, they are brought back to life, thanks to the power of AR. Using a corpus of archives and references, the AR Studio teams reconstructed missing elements in 3D, virtually restored original pigments, and crafted masks in close collaboration with curators from the Louvre’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities.

Visitors can view the museum’s displays in AR by scanning a QR code with their smartphones.  For instance, the “Dendera Zodiac,” a ceiling sculpture depicting a Ptolemaic sky map from around 50 BC, is rendered in 3D, and its symbols and function are explained in plain English.

Also, the Chamber of Ancestors is redecorated in vibrant, glowing colours in honour of the Egyptian pharaohs who reigned before Pharaoh Thutmose III. Then, there’s the ceiling relief on the vault in 3D, inspired by Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman systems. This is accompanied with a narration of its intricate and complex function.