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I'm an award-winning director with 20 years working at the edge of new technology. Studio ANRK is my creative practice, where together with a small team of collaborators, we translate complex, often invisible ideas into experiences that genuinely move people.

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© 2026

REVIVAL

AR Restoration Project

Bringing Ancient Egypt’s artefacts back to life through Augmented Reality.

In collaboration with The Egyptian Museum and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), we worked with Nexus Studios to create AR experiences of some of Egypt’s most treasured artefacts. With meticulous manual 3D modelling, texturing, and animation the artefacts were digitally restored. This process was guided by expertise from the museums, ensuring the artefacts were historically accurately recreated.

An ancient Egyptian statue showing a young pharaoh flanked by two falcon and ibis-headed gods, each resting a hand on his head, displayed in a museum case beside a blue faience vessel.

The restoration of iconic pieces, like the statues of Amun and Thutmose IV’s battle chariot, ensures that these cultural treasures are preserved and accessible for future generations, bridging the gap between ancient history and the modern world.

A large, hieroglyph-carved curved wooden chariot body panel displayed upright in a museum gallery, with small carved monkey figurines in the foreground and a visitor observing nearby exhibits.

By using AR, we allowed visitors to interact with the restored artefacts through their smartphones, positioning the restored object on top of the real one, and tracking it in realtime, so you can move around and look at it from different angles.

  • REVIVAL: Two 3D scan renders of a pharaoh's head, a grey side-profile view and a close-up split-shaded face render used to check surface detail.
  • REVIVAL: A reference photo captioned Temple of Hatshepsut, Osirian statues, showing colossal Osiride pillar statues at the temple's entrance with visitors nearby.
  • REVIVAL: A reference photo of an Osirian statue at a temple beside two 3D render versions of the same figure on a dark background.
  • REVIVAL: A photo of an inscribed stone base beside a panel translating its hieroglyphic dedication to Amun-Re.
  • REVIVAL: A 3D render of a seated triad statue of a god, goddess and small king beside a photo of the damaged original statue.
  • REVIVAL: A cracked, partially reconstructed 3D model of the triad statue beside a close-up of the carved feet and cartouche on its base.
  • REVIVAL: Two shaded renders comparing the carved hieroglyphs on the statue's back pillar beside a finished textured render of the same inscription.
  • REVIVAL: Four detail photos documenting cracks and breakage across the triad statue in its museum case.
  • REVIVAL: A 3D render of the fully restored triad statue of a seated god, goddess and small king, shown from a three-quarter angle.
  • REVIVAL: Reference sketches of tumbling figures beside close-up photos of the statue's carved feet and base used to guide the restoration.
  • REVIVAL: An illustrated scene of Thutmose IV firing a bow from his chariot beside a photo of the original curved chariot body panel in a museum case.
  • REVIVAL: A labelled line drawing of the chariot's painted battle scene, identifying the goddess Nekhbet and Montu, god of war, beside a gilded 3D reconstruction of the complete chariot.

  • Research and reference material gathered from the museums guided every stage of the digital restoration, from photogrammetry scans to hieroglyphic translation.

  • The entrance of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, with a granite sphinx statue in the foreground and visitors near the main doorway.
  • Museum visitors photograph a large carved head of Hatshepsut on a plinth in a gallery of the Egyptian Museum.
  • A grand museum hall lined with colossal ancient Egyptian statues and stone sarcophagi, with visitors walking through.
  • A close-up of a computer screen showing hieroglyph-labelling software analysing a carved obelisk fragment.
  • Two developers review a 3D model of a museum artefact on a laptop, with a phone held up beside it in the gallery.
  • Museum visitors hold up phones running the AR app in front of a painted Coptic wall fragment displayed in a glass case.
  • Two visitors use the AR app on their phones to view a small gilded triad statue displayed among ancient glass vessels.
  • Visitors use their phones near a ram-headed sphinx statue while others photograph painted mummy cases in a nearby case.
  • A visitor in a headscarf uses the AR app on her phone to view a headless classical statue in a museum hall.
  • Two visitors use the AR app on a phone to view a small shrine-shaped artefact in a display case.
  • A visitor uses his phone to view the AR app over a painted Coptic wall fragment displayed in an arched case.
  • A group of visitors gather around a display case to view a model wooden boat, with a phone raised to scan it.

  • What is magical about each of these experiences is that they not only reveal details about the statue or image, they also help us imagine the craftsmanship and artistic genius that went into making them.