With the cooperation with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in late 2000 we began a multi-season project to digitally reconstruct a colossal statue of Ramsses II at the site of the Ramesseum in Thebes, Egypt.

Larger even than the two enormous colossi of memnon that stand nearby, this Ramsses II colossus is among the largest ever built by ancient Egyptian hands.  Felled by Christians in antiquity, the monument nonetheless has continued to elicit ardent fascination.  Enspelled was the famed 19th century illustrator David Roberts, and so enspelled many who have glimpsed his gauzy romantic drawings.  He wasn't alone in picturing this colossus as an idealized 'perfect' ruin--this was, in fact, the site that inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias of Egypt.
 

A Colossal Undertaking

Given the force of the site's presence as a ruin, how is it possible to imagine it rebuilt?  The idea of producing a digital restoration came first in 1996 from Dr. Philippe Martinez, in the form of proposals to Electricité de France (EdF).  Under INSIGHT's auspices, work began in November 2000, and was completed in January 2002.

Starting with the CNRS scholarship to date, our goal was to put the colossus back together.  We were assisted by Dr. Christian Leblanc, who heads the contemporary administration of the site.
 

Piecing Together History

First we divided the huge number of existing fragments into three groups:  a) gigantic pieces requiring special equipment, b) smaller pieces that were captured with a more portable system, and c) formless pieces that did not require 3D digitizing at all.

There are an estimated 500 fragments extant, piled into the long courses of piled stones seen at right.  Of these, we worked with Dr. Leblanc to select 80 key pieces for our reconstruction.  Each of these pieces was then exhaustively recorded, yielding approximately. 500,000 measurements per fragment.
 

Shooting the Smaller Pieces

Next, we needed to document each fragment of the monument individually, as it appears to today's visitors.  This effort involved using laser scanning to capture a 3D model of each relevant granite chunk.

Using the same digitizing process, we also captured the southern 'memnon' colossus as a three-dimensional template on which to base our digital reconstruction of the Ramsses II colossus.

The two monumental fragments, seen at right, required very specialized work because of their enormous size.  Comprising hundreds of square meters in surface area, a total of five days of scanning were required to capture these forms in their entirety.

After the field work, we spent many months back in the lab registering the thousands of individual scans we had gathered in the field.  In August 2002, the whole team gathered in Oakland, California to assemble the colossus, using the newly registered pieces.  After a week of assembly and testing different placements, we arrived at the the model shown below.  To the left is a composite view of the most important fragments; to the right is a rendering of the final model.

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