Reconstruction of the Great Buddha of Bamiyan, Afghanistan

In the valley of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, ca 2000 years ago, two big standing Buddha statues were carved out of the sedimentary rock of the region. They were 53 and 35 meters high and the Great one figured as the tallest representations of a standing Buddha. In March 2001 the Taleban militia demolished the colossal statues, as they were considered an insult to Islam. After the destruction, a consortium was established to rebuild the Great Buddha of Bamiyan at original shape, size and place. Our group did the computer reconstruction of the statue, which will serve as a basis for the physical reconstruction. The work is done in parallel with three different data sets of images and in this paper we report the first results of the 3-D reconstruction of the Great Buddha.