A detail of the falcon under the arms on the chair of Queen Hetepheres at the Semitic Museum at Harvard. —Mary Schwalm/The Boston Globe

On Thursday, the Harvard Semitic Museum will unveil a throne fit for an Egyptian queen — because it’s an exact replica of Queen Hetepheres’s throne, in which the Egyptian royal sat 4,500 years ago.

Researchers at Harvard have used computer modeling software and 3-D milling machines to re-create the artifact, which was discovered by a joint Harvard University and Boston Museum of Fine Arts excavation team in 1925, according to the Harvard Semitic Museum.

The chair’s materials are based on the ancient original: cedar, bright glazed pottery tiles, gold foil, gesso (a white paint mixture), cordage seating, and copper.

Rus Gant, Lead Technical Artist of Giza Project, adds detail to the finish on the side of the chair of Queen Hetepheres. —Mary Schwalm/The Boston Globe

The 1925 archaeological expedition unveiled a small chamber 100 feet underneath Giza which contained burial equipment and other objects for Queen Hetepheres. She was the mother of King Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid.


By recreating the chair, researchers were able to document the ancient process, discovering how exactly Egyptians constructed the throne.

“This is experimental archaeology,’’ Rus Gant, lead technical artist on the project, told The Boston Globe. “We wanted to know how they made it, not just replicate something that looked like it.’’

Watch the story of Queen Hetepheres’s throne here.