Holographic technology brings ancient Eygpt back to life

May 13, 2012 2 Comments by Jonathan Tustain

Edinburgh based start up Holoxica’s 3D holographic technology has been utilised to reveal hidden ancient secrets in ground-breaking new ways.

Holoxica made the headlines earlier this year after developing a new kind of 3D holographic display that does not use glasses or optical tricks, where the 3D images appear in mid-air before the viewer's eyes.

It is their specialism that led University of Edinburgh’s Clinical Research Imaging Centre, to ask the company to create a hologram of the Rhind Mummy, originally excavated from a tomb in Thebes (Luxor) almost 155 years ago. Through CT scans and painstaking animation, Holixica have created a life-sized hologram which reveals new details without opening the wrapping

The Rhind mummy is named after the renowned Scottish Archaeologist and Egyptologist Alexander Rhind who brought the mummy to Scotland in the middle of the 19 th Century – is completely intact in its original black-tarred linen wrapping. The mummy has been in the National Museum of Scotland’s collection ever since.

“We began by painstakingly piecing together an animated hologram of the Mummy’s head and upper shoulders which reveals different layers of visual information as the viewer of the hologram moves from left to right” said Javid Khan, managing director of Holoxica.

“For example, the first layer is the wrapping shroud, which ‘peels’ away to reveal her face. This is followed by the skull. The ‘outer wrapping’ is encrusted with jewels and gold amulets which are visible from angles and, most intriguingly, a metal scarab-shaped cap was placed on top of the skull during mummification, can also be seen in great detail.

“This mummy will never be opened and will always remain intact, so the only way to look inside is to use state of the art scanning and visualisation techniques. The colour animated hologram is the best way to depict this artefact, which is life-sized and shows a level of depth, detail and realism that is difficult to demonstrate in any other way.”

The hologram of the Rhind Mummy has been submitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for ISDH 2012 – the forthcoming 9th International Symposium on Display Holography being held in June, before being put on display thereafter at the MIT Holography Exhibition from June this year running through to September 2013.