Ideas from Meeting for Visualization (July 18)

[susannahpaine]

By order of priority:

• represent length of reign - perhaps stretching things out horizontally to indicate length?
• insert space after Pepy II and before Ibi to represent that many kings did rule before him (typically short reigns without monuments).
• add timeline
• represent things as triangles - more like pyramids?
• I wonder if using Lehner as template for the shape of the monument would be worth it. For instance, the monument of Shepseskaf is not a pyramid.
• include projected height for unfinished pyramids somehow. For the unfinished pyramids that do not have a projected height in our excel sheet, this is because there is no data at all to speculate from. Perhaps indicating this issue with a question mark or some other way.
• bold or highlight the king who starts a new dynasty. Important to keep in mind: since divisions in dynasties is a much later addition and usually not represented in ancient egyptian documents, it should not impact the visualization too much.

Later possible additions:

• indicate whether pyramids had pyramid texts (could even be an asterix next to the name of the king?)
• Represent site/location somehow - specifically highlight the first king to move to new site.
• Perhaps indicate the casing material - whether it was limestone, granite, both, or not cased? I think that is the only other column in the spreadsheet not represented right now. (granite comes from Asswan, south of Egypt, and the casing stone from Turah, next to Cairo. If we end up having a map this could also be added to an infographs)

Other thoughts which I need to give further attention:

• other material for pyramid complex in general: some used alabaster or basalt for the mortuary temple, which are much harder stone to get and manipulate.
• Rough indication of the construction method, which evolved from complex to much more efficient and cost-effective (cf. Arnold 1991, 160).
• additional monuments: Sphinx, Sun Temples.

[kmilo9999]

#15

[christelle-a]

I went into Susannah's comment to edit it so that the suggestions are listed in order of priority. The first section doesn't need to be completed by the next meeting; it was just to get a sense of what items to focus on. We can implement new features as we go along and chat about them as needed.