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Characterisation of the pigments in a Ptolemaic Egyptian Book of the Dead papyrus

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Abstract

A relevant subject of study in the sphere of ancient Egyptian painting technology is given by the evolution of the palette across New Kingdom, Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Functionally to secondary factors such as geographic occurrence of minerals and type of associated surface, the employment of certain painting materials provides relevant insights into particular issues such as relative dating of the object and social rank of the owner. The Book of the Dead of Amenemhet (ROM 978 × 43.1, middle Ptolemaic Period) has been analysed at the Department of Restoration and Conservation of Archivals, Graphics and Book Illumination of the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (Germany). Together with visible reflectance spectroscopy, digital and optical microscopy, devices such as XRD, SEM-EDX and FT-IR have been successfully employed for the characterization of the pigments from the polychrome funerary papyrus displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Canada). The present research took place within a series of investigations performed at the CICS, devoted to the interdisciplinary study of funerary Egyptian papyri dating from the early 18th Dynasty onwards.

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Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks and deepest gratitude are extended to Dr. Doris Oltrogge (CICS) for her precious cooperation and to Andreas Rauschel and Sandra Uckermann (CICS) for their technical support. The authors are thankful to Mrs. Irmtraut Munro for all the important advices and the kind availability, and nonetheless, to Mrs. Roberta Shaw und Mrs. Cathy Stewart (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto) for making the present research possible.

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  1. Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany

    Luigi Maria Di Stefano & Robert Fuchs

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  1. Luigi Maria Di Stefano
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  2. Robert Fuchs
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Correspondence to Robert Fuchs.

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Di Stefano, L.M., Fuchs, R. Characterisation of the pigments in a Ptolemaic Egyptian Book of the Dead papyrus. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 3, 229–244 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-011-0054-3

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