The Mused.org website is a platform for publishing heritage and museum artifacts in award-winning design to bring stories to life. A free and open source software for viewing and telling stories. Created by "librarian professionals and digital humanists", as they define themselves. Have a long experience in digitizing all kinds of cultural projects linked to the digital environment. But, with the arrival of Covid-19, which closed the doors of all these places, the need for these virtual guided tours has grown enormously. In fact, they had many difficulties at the beginning, but now, museums and institutions faced with this need, have opted to support this project.
In addition, they have made a space so that each person, independently, can upload their content as a guided tour. Gathering certain information that they themselves will ask you for in a form, you can create your own project. In addition, they put an e-mail at your disposal, in case you do not know how to make a 3D guide, the administrators help you find someone near you. And now comes Giza Project: See a pyramid from the inside, from home
The Pyramid of Giza by Harvard University
Among all the projects that have been created in Mused, the most recent and interesting is 'Giza Project' conducted by Harvard University. A tour of the most important pyramid in Egypt. The pyramid with a height of 481 feet (146,6 meters) and a base of 750 by 750 (228,6 meters) has been for more than 3.800 years the tallest construction made by humans. The number of stones they used ranges from one million two hundred and sixty thousand (1.260.000) and two million three hundred thousand (2.300.000) with an estimated weight of six million tons (6.000.000). However, if you look inside, all this majestic building is almost nothing.
Taking a walk inside you will find some long narrow corridors, you even have to crouch to be able to reach where the tombs of the pharaohs were. But first, let's go to the beginning of the tour. Once you enter the Mused website and access to see the Giza pyramid project, you can see it freely or click on the 'next' panels where the parts you see will be developed and explained. If you have never been lucky enough to attend in person, this will help you understand what we are seeing. When accessing, the website warns us that it will be the first time that you can see the pyramid in its entirety. Understanding like this, that even if you go to see it in person, there will be parts that you will not be able to access, but here you can. Although, as you can see, each explanation is in English, in Creatives we are going to translate some parts into Spanish.
A guided tour
The first view is the outside of the pyramidjust before entering. By turning the camera you can see the entire city of Cairo, and they explain to us that during ancient times, the banks of the Nile reached as far as the buildings are seen today. The following bird's-eye view image is a 3D representation that gives us an idea of how big the pyramid is. As they say:
“We are on the Giza plateau, a flat rock structure overlooking the surroundings. It was far from the older pyramids south of Saqqara." "The Great Pyramid is the only wonder of the ancient world that is still standing."
The pyramids were built in honor of certain pharaohs who ruled Egypt around 4.500 years ago. The site has three main pyramids, the great sphinx, several more pyramids, and smaller tombs. Giza is a unique site because it was created in the Old Kingdom of Egypt in a short period of time and then abandoned for almost 1000 years. Once we enter inside the pyramid we can see a 2D map to see the internal structure. Inside we can see a series of tunnels and three main chambers, whose uses are mostly unknown. The upper chamber was reserved for the king, the middle one for the queen, and the underground chamber carved into the limestone below the pyramid.
At the beginning of the tour, we go down to the lowest part of the pyramidAccording to what they say, it is normally blocked for visitors, but on this tour you will be able to see it in its entirety. Here we will go to the depths of the pyramid, calculated at about 300 feet or the length of a football field. Khufu lived in 2500 BC and not much is known about him, the only thing there is is a statue of his image. We can keep going down until we reach the first chamber. Khufu could be buried there, but there is still no certainty about it.
After this, we go up to the top of the pyramid, where they meet, as we have read, King and Queen. There are two connected passages to climb, but one of them is blocked by the fall of large stones, as can be seen during the visit. Ascending will not be easy, since we are separated by 28 feet of height to reach the Grand Gallery (that's what they call it). In addition, the climb is narrow and somewhat unstable. Halfway up the climb we can enter through a corridor towards the chamber where the Queen was and at the top, the King, the last part of the tour, a very similar chamber, but the only one that still preserves the sarcophagus.
There are not only pyramids, keep exploring
We can continue exploring the pyramid until the end, in a fantastic journey through which you will be able to observe in detail each of the corners of this pyramid. If we browse the web we see very interesting projects, such as: The temple of Luxor or the Roman villa of Casale, among others. With which we can visit and learn more about everything we have always seen from afar. Or even visited without knowing everything we see. To access them we can link directly in the tours they have prepared. And if you want to create an exhibition in this format, you can contact them to do so. We will be attentive to the new tours.