Data visualization of decoration occurrence and distribution. A comparative study of Late Egyptian funerary decoration in Thebes

Abstract

Decoration in Ancient Egyptian funerary monuments represents an important part of the monuments layout. Beside scenes displaying the owner, scenes of daily life, fabrication, offerings and hieroglyphic texts are found. Not only topics of self-presentation but also decoration for the translation to the afterlife were predominant. Therefore, this paper suggests approaches to analyze distribution and occurrence of decorations of several ancient monuments of the same style, with data visualization and quantitative methods. As a case study ancient Egyptian funerary monuments of High Officials from the Late Period, twenty-fifth to twenty-sixth dynasty, were studied. The decorative scenes were categorized and tagged in terms of their content. The positions in the monument were highlighted and included in abstracted 3-dimensional models. This computational implementation offers users to search for decoration categories, highlight, locate and finally compare the position of a scene between the monuments. The visualized data include the position and orientation of a categorized scene in the monument, their occurrence and distribution among the analyzed monuments. In a further step the analysis data was studied statistically in order to be able to query detailed results of the prevalence, distribution and preservation of decorations and specific scenes. Both introduced solutions provide a user friendly information interface to visualize, compare and request quantitative data.