Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle near Homs are two most famous buildings to have been scanned in minute detail. | |||||
Middle East Online | |||||
PARIS
- 3D reconstructions of some of Syria's most spectacular archaeological
sites go online Tuesday after a big push to digitalise the war-torn
country's threatened heritage.
French digital surveyors
have been working with Syrian archaeologists to map some of the
country's most famous monuments after Islamic State jihadists sparked
international outrage by blowing up two temples in the UNESCO World
Heritage Site of Palmyra last year.
The eighth-century
Umayyad Mosque in the capital Damascus -- regarded by some as the fourth
holiest place in Islam -- and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle
near the ravaged city of Homs are the two most famous buildings to have
been scanned in minute detail.
Photogrammetric
technology developed by the French start-up Iconem has also been used to
record the Roman theatre in the coastal city of Jableh and the
Phoenician site in the ancient port of Ugarit, where evidence of the
world's oldest alphabet was found.
Its technicians have
also been working alongside 15 specialists from the Syrian Directorate
General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) to digitalise some of the
country's major museum collections.
Hundreds of
important heritage sites have been sacked or destroyed during the
five-year conflict, with the destruction of the first-century temples of
Bel and Baalshamin in the ancient desert city of Palmyra causing a
global outcry.
The Islamic State group has made a point
of razing ancient shrines and statues it considers as idolatry and is
also suspected of involvement in the illegal sale of antiquities.
Work
on the "Syrian Heritage" database, the biggest 3D record of the
country's monuments and treasures, began in December and includes a
large number of Ottoman-era buildings in Damascus as well as its
11th-century citadel, which looms over the city.
The
head of DGAM, Maamoun Abdulkarim, said the operation was essential to
"avoid an irreplacable loss to humanity" given "the dramatic situation
in our country".
"This solution gives our
archaeological sites a real hope of renaissance and allows the memory of
them to be preserved, no matter what happens," he added in a statement.
The drive, carried out with the help of the French
grande ecole ENS and the research institute INRIA, is one of a number
trying to catalogue sites in danger of falling into the line of fire.
The
Institute for Digital Archaeology, created by Oxford and Harvard
universities and Dubai's Museum of the Future, is also compiling a
record of many vulnerable sites in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
It
has handed out 5,000 low-cost 3D cameras to archaeologists and NGOs
with the hope of gathering a million images of threatened sites.
The
Million Images Database hopes be fully online by the end of the year
and will display life-size replicas of Palmyra's destroyed triumphal
arch in New York's Times Square and London's Trafalgar Square in April.
The replicas of the arch, blown up by ISIS jihadists in October, are being made with the world's largest 3D printer.
France's
culture minister had earlier floated the idea of a 3D recreation of the
ancient city, known as the "Pearl of the Desert", based on photos taken
by tourists over the years.
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blog archive
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
3D reconstructions of Syria archaeological sites go online
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