A Reconfigurable Framework for the Virtual Reconstruction of Ancient Egyptian Rituals: The Case of the Cippi of Horus

Ancient Egyptian rituals relied on the use of objects believed to possess magical properties, as well as on gestures and recitations. Unfortunately, these rituals are often studied today through museum artifacts and magical texts, presented without the sequence of actions, participants, and spatial settings that gave them contextual meaning. From a historical perspective, reconstructing these elements is useful for establishing hypotheses about how a ritual may have been performed and how its components related to one another. It also constitutes a valuable resource for museums to enhance ancient artifacts and improve visitors’ understanding of their role and meaning within ritual performance. This paper introduces a modular 3D system for reconstructing ancient rituals as interactive digital performances. The approach is grounded in a structured, JSON-based data model that formalizes actors, artifacts, spatial anchors, and stepwise ritual structures, and it is intentionally authored through spreadsheets so that domain experts can iterate the ritual reconstruction without programming. By decoupling ritual definition from application code, the framework supports rapid revision, reuse across scenarios, and explicit representation of alternative ritual pathways. We evaluate the system through a case study of the Healing Ritual with the Cippi of Horus , based on fourth-century BCE inscriptions associated with the Metternich Stela. The pipeline generates Unity scenes with motion-captured performances, audio-based spoken texts, and dynamic prop handling. It also supports branching structures to model ritual variability. Results show that data-driven simulation can function as a practical research tool for specifying ritual performances and for analyzing the intangible aspects of ancient tangible heritage. However, animation authoring and gesture synchronization remain a major bottleneck, as some interactions must be managed through data and code, increasing effort.