"It's as if someone saw the original way the jackal was painted and said, 'it's too fat; make it thinner.' The artist did just that by applying bold white lines to either side of the jackal's black body as well as the upper halves of its back legs."
"Researchers used a 3D digital microscope to work out what the white paint is made of. They found the ancient version of white-out consisted of a mixture of calcite and huntite, both white carbonates. This contrasted to the paint used to depict Ramose's flowing robes, which was made from only huntite."
Curators at the Fitzwilliam Museum discovered a 3,300-year-old papyrus containing a Book of the Dead created for royal scribe Ramose that shows evidence of artistic correction. An artist applied white pigment to the outline of a jackal figure to make it appear thinner, demonstrating that ancient Egyptians used a form of white-out to fix mistakes. Analysis using infrared photography and 3D digital microscopy revealed the white correction consisted of calcite and huntite, both white carbonates. This mixture differed from the huntite-only paint used for Ramose's robes, indicating deliberate selection of correction materials.
#ancient-egyptian-art #papyrus-conservation #artistic-correction-techniques #book-of-the-dead #archaeological-analysis
Read at Artnet News
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