Tomb Raiding with the Great Belzoni
Recommendations: 3
About the Project
As an archaeologist I’ve always been mildly obsessed with early 19th-century explorers, antiquarians and Egyptologists and one of the coolest of these was Giovanni Battista Belzoni who is better known as the Great Belzoni. Belzoni was originally from Italy and after training for the priesthood, studying engineering and working as a circus strongman found his true calling discovering tombs and liberating their treasures for Britain (his adopted home). Belzoni started out his Egyptian adventures after Waterloo and though the war was over he would clash with the French, led by his rival and fellow Italian Bernardino Drovetti, over Egypt’s treasures. He would manage to drag the sculpted head of Ramesses the Great (known as the ‘Head of Memnon’) from the Temple of Ramesseum at Luxor where it would end up in the British Museum. He went on to dig his way into the Temple of Abu Simbel and found the tombs of Ay and Seti the I in the Valley of the Kings. There’s lots of potential with Belzoni’s exploits for Silver Bayonet games. I’ve a lot of ideas but not much time left so I’ll try and aim for two or three scenarios. The first thing will be to make a lot of scatter terrain and some larger pieces of temple ruins which can represent a small bit of the Ramesseum where Belzoni and his followers drag Ramesses’ head to the Nile. Then possibly some arid hill terrain and a tomb entrance for the Valley of the Kings and possibly a camp. Finally, and this probably won’t happen, build the interior of a tomb. I might do a ‘What If’ here and have Belzoni break into Tutankhamun’s tomb (which was broken into in antiquity before Howard Carter’s excavation but who’s to say Belzoni didn’t get there first but had to reseal it after a freaky encounter with a Mummy). Also Seti the I’s tomb is massive and covered in decoration and I’d be years trying to make that. I might also try to make two other things. One will be a very basic coffee table-sized desert board (as I’ve only got a coffee table in the flat and it’ll fit in the car) and the other will be to try and kitbash a few miniatures represent Belzoni and his crew as well his French rivals (though that’s not really terrain but will be fun to do). I’ve left this late as always but I will see how far I can get and probably have to go for the Spring Clean Challenge again.
Related Game: The Silver Bayonet
Related Genre: Historical
Related Contest: TerrainFest 2024
This Project is Active
Making a Start with Board & Scatter Terrain
I bought a large but cheap picture frame and recycled the glass but kept the MDF back. I then used pins to secure the MDF a bit more securely and added wood bracings with old packing polystyrene sheets to it with No More Nails. I’m not sure how I’ll base it yet but thinking of a mix of Filler, Sand and PVA (with some craft paint). I’ll do some experiments and see how that goes.
Did some basing tests on my first bit of scatter terrain using the Filler, Sand and PVA and it seems to work OK. Used a nice 3D-printed ruined obelisk from Highland Miniatures at its centre. I went on to make some Palm Trees using thick paper clips, milliput and some fake fish tank plants from the local pet store.
I’m also in the process of 3D printing a feck ton of Egyptian bits, many of which can be had for free from MyMiniFactory in their Scan The World project. In particular, I found a print from a chap called Thomas Flynn who used to work at the British Museum who had scanned Rameses’ sculpted head which Belzoni dragged away. The head had fallen off a bigger statue the remains of which are still at the Ramesseum to this day. I’m going to make an attempt to hand-sculpt it. I started by building it up with foam-core, tinfoil and bamboo skewers and I’ll have at it with air-drying clay.
