Mythological landscapes and real places. Using virtual reality to investigate the perception of sacred space in the ancient city of Memphis

Our study seeks to address the long-debated problem of the topographical reconstruction of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, through a new approach that combines archaeology, philology and geomorphology in a single framework. The result of this work is a text-augmented map of the city capable to take into account all those philological clues (ancient descriptions of the city and toponyms) that would not fit in an exclusively archaeological map. We present our work-in-progress Virtual Reality experience that combines 3D maps and models, satellite imagery, and excerpts from the original source texts.