In 2015, the Museo Egizio in Turin joined the Leiden expedition to Saqqara, in the area south of the Unas causeway. This report presents the expedition’s new approach as well as some first results of this new cooperation. In the 2018 season, the Leiden-Turin expedition worked in the northern sector of its concession, covering an area of ca. 250 sqm just north of the tomb of Maya. Here Late Antique layers overlie a wind-blown deposit containing some simple burials and numerous “embalmers’ caches”, some of which yielded marl clay cups with hieratic labels. An overview of both the pottery and the human remains found during this season is provided in the present report. Below the wind-blown deposit is a level with Ramesside funerary chapels and shafts. One of them has a remarkable decoration including six small-format figures carved in high relief in the middle of its back wall. The shaft of another chapel was also excavated, revealing several plundered chambers which yielded only scanty finds. A large mud-brick wall exposed during the previous season turned out to belong to the outer wall and pylon entrance of a monumental tomb, whose owner’s name has not been found yet. A photogrammetric survey by a team of the Politecnico di Milano yielded a 3D model of the dig (included in the web version of this report), as well as several 3D models of the monumental tombs (completed or in the making). During the season, conservation work was carried out on several tombs and on the newly discovered Ramesside chapel. ملخص البحث: شارك المتحف المصري بتورينو في عام 2015 مع بعثة لايدن فى سقارة، في المنطقة الواقعة جنوب طريق أوناس الصاعد. يُبرز هذا التقرير الأسلوب الجديد للبعثة وكذلك بعض النتائج الأولية لهذا التعاون الجديد. في موسم 2018، عملت بعثة "لايدن – تورينو" في القطاع الشمالي من الامتياز الممنوح لهم، وهو ما يغطي مساحة حوالى 250 متر مربع شمالي مقبرة مايا. تكسو طبقات العصور القديمة المتأخرة في هذه المنطقة رواسب محمولة بالرياح، وتحتوي على بعض المدافن البسيطة والعديد من "مقتنيات المحنطين"، بعضها اشتمل على أكواب طينية من الطين الكلسي بعلامات مكتوبة بالخط الهيراطيقي. يوفر هذا التقرير لمحة عامة عن كل من الفخار والبقايا البشرية التي عُثر عليها خلال هذا العام. أسفل الرواسب المحمولة بالرياح يوجد مستوى مكون من الأماكن المخصصة للصلاة وتقديم القرابين وأكثر من بئر كلها تعود إلى حقبة الرعامسة. أحدها يحتوي على زخارف رائعة بما في ذلك ستة أشكال صغيرة الحجم منحوتة نحتًا يبرز معالمها في منتصف الجدار الخلفي. بالإضافة إلى اكتشاف عامود معبد آخر والكشف عن حجرات منهوبة عديدة أدت إلى اكتشافات ضئيلة. كما تبين أن جدارًا كبيرًا من الطوب اللبن، كان قد تم اكتشافه خلال الموسم الماضي، ينتمي إلى الجدار الخارجي ومدخل صرح مقبرة ضخمة لم يتم تحديد اسم مالكها بعد. أسفر مسح تصويري قام به فريق من مدرسة الفنون التطبيقية للمهندسين في ميلانو "Politecnico di Milano" عن تقديم نموذج ثلاثي الأبعاد لموقع التنقيب (يوجد في النسخة الالكترونية من التقرير على الموقع الالكتروني)، بالإضافة إلى العديد من النماذج ثلاثية الأبعاد للمقابر الأثرية (التي تم إعدادها أو قيد الإعداد). خلال الموسم، تم القيام بأعمال صيانة وترميم للعديد من المقابر وكذلك مكان الصلاة المكتشف حديثًا العائد إلى حقبة الرعامسة.
The Museo Egizio in Turin holds a unique collection of 116 mummified or skeletal human bodies or body parts. This collection is currently under study by the "Mummy Conservation Project", a collaborative venture of the Museo Egizio, the Institute for Mummy Studies of Eurac Research, the Soprintendenza Archeologia del Piemonte, and the Horus Group, whose aim is to improve mummy conservation techniques. In the context of this project, an assessment of the state of preservation of the mummified human remains was carried out by monitoring basic physical parameters (temperature, relative humidity and water activity) and by performing a fungal survey. The latter revealed the presence on the mummified material of fungal spores and mycelia that could possibly pose a biodegradative threat. However, all the current physical parameters show that the mummies are stored under optimal environmental conditions, which will suppress any microbial up-growth.
In the field of Cultural Heritage, the interdisciplinary and multi-technique approach to the study of ancient artifacts is widely used, providing more reliable and complementary results. To study these great value objects, non-invasive approach is always preferred, although micro-invasive techniques may be necessary to answer specific questions. In this work, a study based on both non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques in a two-step approach was applied as a powerful tool to characterize materials and their layering, as well as to get a deeper understanding of the artistic techniques and the conservation history. The object under study is an ancient Egyptian wooden statuette, belonging to the collections of the Museo Egizio of Torino. Analyses were performed at the Centro Conservazione e Restauro “La Venaria Reale” (CCR), starting from non-invasive multispectral and X-ray imaging on the whole object in order to obtain information about the technique of assembly and on some aspects of the constituents materials, and subsequently, non-invasive XRF analysis and FT-IR, SEM-EDX and optical microscopy on micro-samples. This work is intended to lay the groundwork to the study of other wooden objects and statuettes belonging to the same funerary equipment, with the definition of a measuring protocol to study the most significant aspects of the artistic technique.
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