3D printing and 3D scanning of our ancient history: Preservation and protection of our cultural heritage and identity.

3D printing and 3D scanning are increasingly used in archeology and in cultural heritage preservation. These 3D technologies provide museum curators, researchers and archeologists with new tools to capture in 3D ancient objects, artifacts or art pieces. They can then study, replicate, restore or simply archive them with much more details than traditional 2D pictures. It is even possible to 3D scan entire archeological sites to get a full 3D mapping. Iraq is too rich in ancient cultural heritage but unfortunately much of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts remain in archives of the museums worldwide. Having the exact copies of these ancient artifacts will allow the audience here to learn more about our heritage. The Center of Preserving of the Cities Heritage and Identity (CPCHI) at International Energy and Environment Foundation (IEEF) started a roadmap in preserving our ancient history with 3D scanning, 3D virtual reality and 3D printing technologies. As part of the project create high-quality 3D replicas of our cultural heritage, which are located in our museums and sites and most of them are spread around the world and then exhibit it in several venues throughout our country Iraq. Promising results were obtained in this project through printing of 3D models and generating 3D virtual reality models for our cultural heritage, based on the 3D scan of the original objects that submitted by some international museums and heritage institutes. We expect that this project will not only become vital in the field of replicate or reconstruction of ancient objects, but also for research, documentation, preservation and educational purposes, and it has the potential to serve these purposes in an accessible and all-inclusive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]