In his day (1479-26 BC), Thutmose was a great and glorious pharaoh. The Napoleon of the New Kingdom, he was a military genius, a judicious administrator and a wise statesman to boot.

While his body was being mummified, the walls of his tomb were painted with a complete depiction of the Amduat: a key Egyptian text that chronicles the passage of the Sun god, hour by hour, through the darkness of night. His journey — made on a barque through a land of solar baboons, scarabs and serpents — is beset by dangers that must be overcome by incantatory magic if he is to be reborn the next day.

It was this story, unspooling like some Ancient Egyptian comic strip around an underground chamber, that excavators discovered in 1868. Ever since, hordes of sweltering tourists have followed in their footsteps, squeezing through narrow passageways to stand awestruck and half-suffocated amid the mysteries of a lost belief. Yet, these visitors destroy what they come to see. The images are being obliterated by the tapping sticks of tour guides, encrusted by the salt that crystallises from sweat, damaged by the water that condenses from every gasp of amazement.

The paintings of artists who, in the 19th century, documented these newly discovered wonders of the Valley of the Kings, grow ever more valuable as the originals slowly deteriorate. But modern technology now offers these treasures a future. Using laser imaging, three-dimensional replicas can be constructed. Factum Arte, a Spanish-based company, has just done this for the tomb of Thutmose.

Immortal Pharaoh, a show that combines original artefacts with a full-scale replica of the burial chamber, is open at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh. This stereo-optical adventure is far more enthralling than any stocking-filler video game.

But it’s a fake! The complaint is only too quick. We may live in a world where many of our most treasured artworks — from Renaissance copies of Roman copies of Ancient Greek sculptures to Leonardo’s The Last Supper, so extensively restored that arguably the original no longer exists — are replicas. And yet, infused with the powerful spirit of Romanticism, we still crave the essence of the unique. Facsimiles may have their place in the funfair, but when it comes to profound feelings we demand “authenticity”.

Yet the replica can fulfil more than a mere functional role. It is not simply about the wider dissemination of ideas — though from autograph copies by Old Masters to Woolworths’ mass-market prints, the imitation has played an important part in art history. Nor is it only about the re-creation of an experience — though an oleograph hung in place of the family portrait that was flogged to pay death duties can, no doubt, prove consoling. And it is about more than conservation — though Egyptian authorities are developing plans with Factum Arte to make replica tombs in the Valley of the Kings so that both the precious originals and the valuable tourist industry can be preserved.

A copy can accrue a spiritual value. Think of the Islamic miniatures of medieval times. Their creation was a craft based on painstaking imitation. The more often the artist repeated the image, the more perfect he became. Or think of the Christian monks in their damp scriptoriums, sinking ever deeper into spiritual reverie as they laboriously transcribed their patterns.

It may be whimsical to imagine that the technicians who traced the painted plaster surfaces of Thutmose III’s tomb inch by painstaking inch to create their vivid copy had an experience analogous to that of medieval monks. But maybe their finished work can offer some modern replica of lost religious wisdom. The facsimile, by advancing our understanding, can deepen our experience. It can lead us farther into the mindset of the tomb’s first creators. For a few moments we are buried within their spiritual world.

So remember that other great tenet of the Romantic movement: the willing suspension of disbelief. Step into the facsimile tomb of Thutmose and take a fantastical leap of faith.

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