Museo Egizio di Torino launches virtual tour and video game for young audiences

The Museo Egizio di Torino has expanded its virtual tour initiative, originally announced in February 2021, with a version specifically designed for primary and secondary school students. The new offering includes a point-and-click video game titled 'Ritorno a Deir el-Medina', developed in collaboration with the cooperative Indici Opponibili. The virtual tour covers two digitized rooms: one displaying artifacts from the village of Deir el-Medina near Luxor, home to artisans who worked on the Valley of the Kings and Queens tombs (16th-11th century BCE), and the other featuring the tomb of royal architect Kha and his wife Merit, discovered in 1906 by Ernesto Schiaparelli. The tour allows 360° navigation, explanatory videos, and access to normally restricted areas like the funerary chapel of Maia. The video content was created with Egyptologists and curators Alessia Fassone and Federica Facchetti. However, the youth version lacks texts, images, and 3D models present in the original tour. The free browser-based game follows a girl transported to New Kingdom Deir el-Medina, where players solve puzzles to collect amulet fragments. The initiative demonstrates the museum's continued commitment to digitization post-pandemic.