Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (2(38).2013)

48

The Museum

at the mission are Egyptologists, conservators, architects, a photographer, a graphic artist and
an archaeology student. So far, the team has completed five seasons of work.3
The mission’s unchanging main goal is to give the temple of Tuthmosis back to the world.
This can be achieved in a variety of ways. A reconstruction in the original location is, again,
out of the question. But it is possible to present the most interesting, valuable and impressive
pieces in the museum that we hope will be built near Deir el-Bahari. There, a reconstructed
temple wall could be put on show, together with a series of royal portraits (fig. 3), fragments
of a religious procession with exceptionally surviving painted details, piles of offerings in
fairy tale colours and many other elements of polychrome, sculpted decorations. To attain
this goal, the items planned for the exhibition must be conserved (the polychrome reliefs must
be cleaned and desalted, hardened, the fragments glued and the connections between them
possibly reinforced). The polychromes, which survived thanks to exceptional conditions (be-
ing cut off from light and air under rock rubble), are exceptionally valuable and delicate, and
therefore require especially tender conservation.
The way to open the temple to the world, and not only to the scholarly world, lies through
publications, which should include photographs and drawings of the reliefs, copies and transla-
tions of hieroglyphic texts, as well as a scholarly interpretation of the iconographie programme,
architectural analyses and studies about the history of the construction and the temple’s func-
tions. Research on these aspects has been under way for many years and has yielded a detailed
reconstruction of its layout, with functions assigned to most rooms and scenes to specific walls.
Our knowledge about the temple has grown with every season, and we have been solving new
riddles about the sequences of scenes, assigning them to particular rituals, and placing such
key elements as lintels and door jambs, all of which allows us to reconstruct the temple more
and more fully (fig. 4). New scaled drawings of the walls are created, older ones are successfully
redrawn in graphic programmes. Fragments of the decoration are photographed, and selected
scenes are assembled from these photographs. A book about the temple, by Monika Dolińska
and Janina Wiercińska, is being planned as a multi-volume publication. The temple will also
be presented in other forms, such as 3-D models, also on the Internet. We have already cre-
ated the first model, a purely architectural one, on the basis of the latest research, with greater
precision and corrections of earlier plans. The next model, which also incorporates the wall
decorations, is currently being made. Plans include creating a website devoted to the temple
and the outcomes of the mission’s activities.
There is no end to the theoretical work on reconstructing the temple of Tuthmosis: some
decorated fragments will always evade placement. But as soon as the precious findings are
preserved and publicized, and the book about the temple appears, we will be able to declare
the completion of project “Tuthmosis.”
MD

3 8.11-13.12.2008: Monika Dolińska (mission director), Janina Wiercińska (Egyptologist), Zbigniew Doliński
(photographer), Marek Puszkarski (graphic artist), Zbigniew Godziejewski (conservator); 8.11-15.12.2009: Monika
Dolińska, Janina Wiercińska, Zbigniew Doliński, Marek Puszkarski, Zbigniew Godziejewski, Joanna Lis (conserva-
tor); 11.11-9.12.2010: Monika Dolińska, Janina Wiercińska, Piotr Czerkwiński (Egyptologist), Zbigniew Doliński,
Marek Puszkarski; 1.11-13.12.2011: Monika Dolińska, Janina Wiercińska, Piotr Czerkwiński, Zbigniew Doliński,
Joanna Lis, Andrzej Karolczak (conservator), Mariusz Caban, Szymon Caban (architects), Filip Taterka (student of
archeology); 28.10-12.12.2012: Monika Dolińska, Janina Wiercińska, Piotr Czerkwiński, Zbigniew Doliński, Marek
Puszkarski, Mariusz Caban, Filip Taterka. The last three seasons were funded by the National Science Centre.