I confess, I am not very aware of what’s going on in Egyptology – but visitors to Rossella Lorenzi’s new space in Second Life certainly will become so!

Rossella is a reporter for the Discovery Channel, and maintains a blog about the latest happenings in the world of archaeology. Recently, she’s been crafting a ‘Chamber of Secrets’ that recreates the passage from the world of the living to the world of the dead – or at least, how that was conceived in the ‘Amduat – the Book of the Secret Chamber’ and ‘the Book of Gates’. These funerary texts were thought to contain, according to Rossella, the secret to eternal life. Her posts about the creation process are here:

Yesterday, Rossella took me on a guided tour of her new zone in Second Life, and guided me through the Secret Chamber. It was most impressive, and struck me as an excellent example of how the ‘good-enough’ virtuality of Second Life can be used archaeologically. As I travelled through the Secret Chamber, I was reminded of caves, mithrae, and other secret places used for initiation rites in ancient cultures. It was quite a visceral experience, actually! Certainly, experiencing an Egyptian conception of the afterlife (or the road to it) carried much more force than simply reading about it…

Here’re a pic from my journey to the afterlife…

And here’s the link to a video Rossella made to give some of the flavour of the jouney.

Finally, cheers to Rossella for a well-done build in Second Life!