Overview
- Infrared imaging and 3D microscopy show white overpaint deliberately reshaped a jackal figure on Ramose’s Book of the Dead to make it appear slimmer.
- Analyses identify the corrective as a mixture of huntite and calcite with flecks of yellow orpiment likely added to blend with the original papyrus tone.
- The finding emerged as conservators prepared the papyrus for the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition, on view through April 12, 2026.
- Helen Strudwick reports spotting comparable corrections on the British Museum’s Book of the Dead of Nakht and Cairo’s Yuya papyrus, suggesting a wider practice.
- The Ramose scroll, excavated at Sedment by W. M. Flinders Petrie in 1922 and painstakingly reassembled in the early 2000s, is unusually well preserved for such analysis.