European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 31, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Modem computers helping preserve ancient Sphinx the computerized reconstruction of the Sphinx As it looked 3,300 years ago includes the mortuary statue of pharaoh amenhotep ii of which there is no longer any  Glenn Rifkin the new York times for More than 4,000 years the great Sphinx with its King s head and lion s body has been standing guard for the great pyramids at Giza in the desert outside Cairo. But centuries of Sand wind and Man s intrusions have not been kind to the mysterious sculpture that pharaoh Khafre commissioned in 2500 . Now however an Egypt Logist and an architectural firm have been Able to use personal computers to provide a startlingly detailed View of what the Sphinx probably looked like in its heyday a around 1279 ., after the Monument was finally completed and before it a began its inexorable decline. The mechanics Are there to freeze the Sphinx or the great pyramids in 3-d form for the future Quot said Mark Lehner the Egypt Logist of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago who has been measuring and mapping the Sphinx for More than a decade. More to the Point Lehner says his team has been Able to capture the Sphinx electronically in its current state creating a record for future archaeologists Down to minute details of its eroded lace and body. Quot to be Able to take digital images and directly input them into the computer so that a Model of the artefact can to reproduced instantly is a major breakthrough Quot Lehner said. Computer aided design is nothing new. What makes the Sphinx project noteworthy is that instead of powerful work stations or minicomputers Lehner s team performed the work on Garden variety personal computers for the most part using off the shelf software. As a result the work was done for a fraction of what it might have Cost Only a few years ago. And the significance May go fur beyond archaeology. The computer sculptors who rendered the Sphinx in digital form say the techniques and software they refined along the Way have practical applications a for architecture civil engineering and any other Endeavor in which manipulating millions of bits of data might prove a Cost effective dry run before moving millions of tons of Earth Stone and steel. Quot the Sphinx in its current state is a very complicated object Quot said Jon Jerde an egyptology Buff whose los Angeles based architectural firm worked on the project. Quot if we can document that we can document  the technology he said Cun allow architects to Fly Over pass through and move around simulated architectural designs on the computer screen. S in fact Jerde s firm Jerde partnership whose clients include the euro Disney theme Park near Paris is now applying what it Learned from the Sphinx work to the design of a Large mixed use commercial development project for a client in Japan. When Lehner set to work More than 10 years ago surveying and documenting the Sphinx and the surrounding Giza plateau he used traditional tools. His contour maps and Survey drawings were the painstakingly detailed result of four years Worth of a ruling Over and around the Sphinx s body with a measuring tape. And using a special Type of camera borrowed from the Gorman archaeological Institute in Cairo to made  pictures Akin to old fashioned Stereoscope photos a of the entire Structure. Then about two years ago Lehner c Alk d in his Friend Jerde. The architect assigned his firm s Dirac Tor of computer aided design Thomas daggers to the project. Jaggers began converting hand wrought maps and. Quot drawings into the  lorm required by the computer. The medium for this translation was a special electronic drawing Board Calk d a Digitizer which has a stylus that Jaggers used to carefully Trace Over Lehner s documents. The Digitizer produced a 3-d wire Frame Model of the Sphinx. But the researchers realized they would need to put a Quot skin Quot on the Model to make it look More realistic. At first Jaggers tried to create the surface using existing software but the work which called for plotting 2.6 million surface Points was tedious. The software was not intended for such tasks and it took More than a week to apply a skin to just the face and front paws. Jaggers was getting a feel for Why construction of the original Sphinx spanned Many generations of pharaohs. Jaggers got in touch with a Small Denver based software company named Schreiber instruments which As it turned out had a package called Quick surf. The software was designed for uses like mapping the Ocean floor but Schreiber worked with Jaggers to adapt Quick Surl to his needs. The result he was Able to create a surface Tor the Sphinx Model in about 20 seconds. I Laving a 3-d computer Model of the Sphinx in its current torm Lehner and Jaggers set out to enhance the Model and re create its original appearance. Lehner s knowledge and experience in Giza gave him insights into the original work. Contrary to popular belief for example Napoleon s troops had not blasted off the nose by using the Sphinx Tor Cannon practice it had been chiselled off by 1 5th Century vandals. At some Point the Beard also fell off and Lehner electronically reconstructed it based on fragments in British and egyptian museums. Needing a face to use As a Model Lehner chose pharaoh Khafre the Sphinx s master planner. Khafre s visage taken from an existing statue was digitized and merged onto the Model. Lehner s research also showed that a mortuary statue of one of Khafre s successors pharaoh amenhotep ii had probably been added to a spot in front of the lion s Chest above a Chapel Between the paws. The researchers digitized an existing statue and it too took its place in their computerized rendering. The final touch was to add texture and color to the Model using a Complex computer graphics package. The computer Model then looked like an actual photograph Complete with highlights and shadows. Despite his pleasure Over the Model of the reconstructed Sphinx Lehner called the work Quot something of a red  the real value of the project he said is in the conservation of the Sphinx As it is today. Computer modelling will allow archaeologists to track the erosion of the statue and determine what it Wilf look like in 50 to 100 years. They can also Experiment with simulations of protective structures and devices to help save the Sphinx and other works of Antiquity. 24 stripes Magazine october 31, 1991 a r