Sun Temple of Niuserre

Description

Type of resource	three dimensional object

Creators/Contributors

Creator	Sullivan, Elaine A.

Bibliographic information

Contained on project page	Title Model Metadata: Dynasty 5
ORIGINAL OWNER OR SPONSOR OF STRUCTURE (Owner/Builder)	Title Niuserre
TYPE OF MONUMENT (Type)	Title Temple (Solar), Obelisk
TEMPORAL PERIOD OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First Period)	Title Old Kingdom
DYNASTY OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First Dynasty)	Title Dynasty 5
ROYAL REIGN OF ORIGINAL CONSTRUCTION (First King)	Title Niuserre
SITE	Title Abu Ghurab
MODERN SCHOLAR/EXPLORER FIRST DOCUMENTING STRUCTURE (Discoverer)	Title Perring
YEAR OF REDISCOVERY IN MODERN TIMES (Years)	Title 1838-39
TYPE OF STRUCTURE (3D Model Type)	Title Custom model
DATE OF MODEL CONSTRUCTION OR UPDATE (3D Model Date)	Title 2013.0
NAME OF 3D MODELER	Title Elaine Sullivan
SOFTWARE USED FOR MODEL BUILD	Title SketchUp Pro
COPYRIGHT (Copyright)	Title UC Regents, 3D Saqqara Project
SOURCES/REFERENCES FOR 2D BASE DATA (Citation)	Title Polygon data from Bresciani and Giammarusti (2003) added to and emended by GIS Supervisor and Senior Surveyor Emanuele Brienza (2010)
BASEMAPS/IMAGERY UTILIZED FOR GEO-REFERENCING 2D BASE DATA (Maps Used)	Title Geo-referenced on MHR Le Caire map H21
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL HEIGHT OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Height Original(m))	Title 56.5, base of platform to tip of obelisk (hypothesized)
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL LENGTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Length Original(m))	Title 39.0
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL WIDTH OF STRUCTURE IN METERS (Width Original(m))	Title 39.0
SOURCES/REFERENCE USED AS BASIS FOR 3D MODEL CONSTRUCTION (3D Data Source)	Title Friedrich Bissing and Ludwig Borchardt, Das Re-Heiligtum des Königs Ne-Woser-Re (Berlin: A. Duncker, 1905); Miroslav Verner, The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt’s Great Monuments (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 105-110
DESCRIPTION – ORIGINAL EXTERIOR MATERIAL (3D Texture)	Title StoneAccording to Verner (2001: 110), the obelisk itself was made of limestone blocks (not a single piece of stone), so it was textured with the block pattern in the same size as those of the base; In the Bissing and Borchardt publication (1905: Abb. 20) the platform is depicted as comprised of 13 courses of limestone and red granite facing, so this was used as a size and texture guide for the reconstruction; the block size for the enclosure wall is based on the images in Bissing and Borchardt (1905: Abb. 16); the schematic entrance structure was given a basic limestone texture
UNCERTAINTY LEVEL FOR 3D MODEL CONSTRUCTION	Title 3.0
Elevation - placement in model ASL	Title 35.5
Discussion of virtual reconstruction and interpretative choices	Title The model was reconstructed with a platform base of 39x39m, top of 28x28m, and height of 19m, and an obelisk base of 19x19m, and height of 37.5m, total height of monument measuring 56.5m; the monument itself stands on a series of artificial terraces, and was surrounded by an enclosure wall of limestone blocks, here represented in a highly schematic way; the plans and to-scale perspective drawings of Bissing and Borchardt (1905: blatts 1-3) were used for the model reconstruction; a terrace was added to the model in order to place the monument at the estimated height ASL, as the original monument did not sit on the desert surfaceOnly the obelisk, pedestal, and (very schematic) enclosure and entrance structure were added to the model to represent the visual impact of large monuments at Abusir from the core Saqqara area; no additional details (including the causeway or valley temple) were added to the model, as they were outside the scope of the projectMore recent study of the monument has challenged some of the conclusions of Bissing and Borchardt, and suggest the core obelisk and platform may have been much smaller and squatter, see: Angela Bosco et al., “A Virtual Reconstruction of the Sun Temple of Niuserra: From Scans to ABIM,” in Oceans of Data Proceedings of the 44th Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, ed. Mieko Matsumoto and Espen Uleberg (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 377–88; Massimiliano Nuzzolo et al., “Sun Temple of Nyuserre in Abu Ghurab: Report of the 2017 Season,” Prague Egyptological Studies 21 (2018): 45–72
Part of publication	Title Sullivan, Elaine A. Constructing the Sacred: Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis at Saqqara, Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2020, http://doi.org/10.21627/2020cts
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/kg307fp4586

Access conditions

Use and reproduction

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license. The material is made available for non-commercial, research purposes. Any third party material may need to be permissioned separately for reuse.

Copyright

Stanford University, 2019.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Collection

Constructing the Sacred Archive

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