A 3000 year old puzzle: a strategic approach for de-restoring and reassembling a fragmented ancient Egyptian anthropoid coffin lid (original) (raw)

2013, ICOM-CC Interim Meeting "Heritage Wood: Research & Conservation in the 21st Century"

""This case study focuses on the development of a systematic approach for the de-restoration and reassembly of an ancient Egyptian anthropoid wooden coffin lid belonging to the coffin of the Egyptian priestess But-haar-chons from the 3rd Intermediate Period, Dynasty 21/22 (c. 970-890 B.C.E.). The coffin was excavated in 1891 together with a large number of other coffins from a tomb known as The Second Find of Deir el Bahari, which was built for the priests of Amun from Thebes. In 1893, the coffin lid was donated to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, but was kept in museum storage ever since due to its badly damaged condition. The coffin lid is constructed of 23 wood sections that are edge- joined together, with loose tongues and dowels, and the cavities of the rough wooden surface are filled and covered with a preparation layer (earthen material). The exterior of the lid is lavishly decorated with multicoloured figures on yellow ground and coated with a typical brilliant yellowing varnish. However, due to serious structural damage that occurred in the past followed by an inconsistent and incomplete restoration measure executed sometime during the 20th C., the coffin presents itself in a state entirely unfit for display or safe storage. Some of the wood sections of the carcass were inappropriately aligned and fixed with new dowels and an excessive amount of PVAc-emulsion glue, whilst the gaps between the wood sections were filled with modern gypsum plaster. At the same time, the stilt (foot of the coffin) was left entirely disassembled and a large number of loose coating fragments and slabs deriving from various locations of the coffin lid were still kept as loose elements. These fragments could not be relocated due to the inappropriate alignment of the carcass. The goal of the current intervention and conservation is to enable a correct and complete reassembly of all existing structural and decorative elements, as well as the structural consolidation and filling of the cavities underneath the preparation layer. To achieve this, a substantial de-restoration of the coffin lid is required. In order to reposition and reassemble the entire wooden structure and the loose coating fragments, all the gypsum plaster had to be removed from the joints. This was necessary to access the modern dowels used for stabilizing the falsely aligned wood sections. To keep the coffin lid stable during the disassembly process, a secondary supporting structure was developed that allows access from all directions. Before focusing on readjusting the unaligned wood sections, the paint layers were consolidated with a mixture of isinglass and funori using white spirit to make the water sensitive paint layer hydrophobic. The filling of the gaps between the thick preparation layer and the wood was performed with glass micro-balloons and rabbit skin glue. As a replacement for the ordinary stiff gypsum plaster filler previously used for the large gaps between the joints, a new filling material was developed using the silica-compounds Perlite® and Poraver® bound with gypsum. This preliminary stage in the de-restoration of the coffin lid now enables the development of a detailed step-by-step strategy to ensure the proper and non-destructive disconnection and alignment of the wooden sections followed by the reassembly of all loose paint fragments.""