PHILADELPHIA — Imagine pointing your phone at China’s ancient terracotta warriors to arm them with spears and bows, weapons that disintegrated long ago.

For many people, the Franklin Institute’s new exhibition, “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor,” will be the only chance to see a small subset of the approximately 8,000 clay soldiers and other figures that were discovered beneath a Chinese persimmon orchard in 1974. Some 2,200 years ago, they were built by the emperor Qin Shihuangdi in a massive public works project that lasted about 30 years.

While some of these 10 warriors have been exhibited elsewhere, the institute is enhancing the experience with augmented reality technology to digitally recreate weapons and other objects that were originally held by the statues. The original artifacts crumbled and vanished as earthen walls and roof timbers collapsed during the warriors’ long occupancy of three underground pits.