Rita Lucarelli

University of California, Berkeley, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Faculty Member

University of California, Berkeley, Near Eastern Studies, Faculty Member

UC Berkeley, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthroplogy, Curator of Egyptology

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Papers by Rita Lucarelli

Images of eternity in 3D: the visualization of ancient Egyptian coffins through photogrammetry

By using the technique of photogrammetry for the 3D visualization of ancient Egyptian coffins dec... more By using the technique of photogrammetry for the 3D visualization of ancient Egyptian coffins decorated with magical texts and iconography, this project aims at building up a new digital platform for an in-depth study of the ancient Egyptian funerary culture and its media. It has started in August 2015 through the support of a Mellon Fellowship for the Digital Humanities at UC Berkeley and up until now it has focused on ancient Egyptian coffins kept at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology of UC Berkeley. The main outcome will be a digital platform that allows to display a coffin in 3D and where users will be able to pan, rotate, and zoom in on the coffin, clicking on areas of text to highlight them and view an annotated translation together with other metadata (transcription of the hieroglyphic text, bibliography, textual variants, museological data, provenance, etc.

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Between men and gods : demons in ancient Egypt

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Digitizing and Annotating Ancient Egyptian Coffins: The Book of the Dead in 3D

BRILL eBooks, Feb 23, 2023

3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for gen... more 3D visualizations of heritage objects such as ancient Egyptian coffins can be better used for general and specialistic studies if they also provide annotations. This paper presents the system of annotations developed for the "Book of the Dead in 3D Project," which applies photogrammetry and digital annotations to coffins and sarcophagi produced in the 1st millennium bce. The annotated models of the project include the transcription, translation and transliteration of the magical texts inscribed on the coffins, which can be interactively read by the user while navigating the 3D model.

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The Perception of the Human Body in the Ancient Egyptian Funerary Literature and the Book of the Dead

Death Imagined. Ancient Perceptions of Death and Dying, 2025

The Perception of the Human Body in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Literature Imagining the experience... more The Perception of the Human Body in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Literature Imagining the experience of death from the etic perspective of the living generally results, in many societies, ancient and modern, into an attempt to understand the spiritual dimension that transcends the bodily one. While the body is seen as related mainly to the living, the soul/spirit part of an individual is conceived as belonging to the realm of the dead. Although depictions of bodies populate the imageries of the beyond in ancient as well as in modern religious cultures, those bodies are interpreted mainly as visual depictions of the souls/spirits of the dead, and not as physical bodies themselves. The survival and resurrection of the soul, which is discussed in many studies of philosophy and history of religions, is therefore seen in contrast to the decadence of the body, which even when preserved with care through mummification, as in ancient Egypt, it remains on and belongs to the earth. 1 The ancient Egyptian funerary literature and iconography are central sources to understand the conception of the body in their society, although they may at first sight appear confusing since they describe and depict bodies of different kinds: the human, intact and always covered bodies of the deceased, the decapitated or amputated bodies of the damned, the hybrid bodies of the deities, and liminal beings populating the regions of the netherworld. By analysing the textual and iconographical evidence 1 However, the belief in the resurrection of the body in the Beyond is a central belief in several religions such as Christianity and Judaism.

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A Solar-Ship Voyage: The Ancient Egyptian Religion as Inspiration in the Life and Music of Sun Ra and the Astro-Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra

Aegyptiaca. Journal of the History of Reception of Ancient Egypt, 2024

Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofu... more Presenting himself as an alien coming from Saturn, Sun Ra has been considered a pioneer of Afrofuturism whose music and live performances with his Arkestra are nowadays consid ered classics of African-American jazz music, theater and poetry. Egypt has been a central source of inspiration for this polyhedric artist; this essay analyzes how Sun Ra used and re-interpreted elements of the ancient Egyptian religious culture and its deities in his work and how such contents relate to the development of the Afrofuturistic philosophy within the American climate of political unrest during which he lived and performed.

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La demonizzazione delle malattie in antico Egitto

MEDICO, MALATTIA E SOCIETÀ Testi e contesti tra mondo antico e mondo moderno, 2024

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