3D Reconstruction of the Lion Temple at Musawwarat es Sufra: 3D Model and Domain Ontologies

The management of huge amount of data requires new methods, particularly in the field of information technologies. This paper describes the 3D reconstruction of the Lion Temple at Musawwarat es Sufra in Sudan. The monument was erected in the third century B.C. A 3D reconstruction of the temple has already been made in the 1990s starting from the excavation data. Our project is addressed at testing a new approach based on the integration of the open source software BLENDER for the processing of 3D data, with the GML for the management of geographical data, and the CIDOC-CRM for the ontological description of the monument. In order to manage and organize the architectonic, iconographical and geographical data we used an ontological formalization for the sharing of our archive. While the georeferentiation of the 3D model, through a spatial coordinate reference system assigned in the GML project, allows to import and make readable the reconstruction in any GIS system, the use of the CIDOC-CRM ontology allow to describe the monument according to international standards for cultural heritage documentation. So it is possible on the one hand to visualize the 3D model and all information, and the other hand to perform any possible queries on geographical and descriptive data. The standardization of the software and its interoperability could guarantee the fruition and exchange of data among different users; in this way it will be possible check and update the reconstruction.