Researchers have discovered that ancient Egyptians used an early version of correction fluid to fix errors in artwork and documents. The news was first reported in era London.
While preparing a 3,300-year-old papyrus for the “Made in Ancient Egypt” exhibition at Britain’s Fitzwilliam Museum, museum staff noticed that the painted figure of a jackal had been modified to make it appear slimmer.
The jackal is part of a scene from the Book of the Dead, a scroll made to guide the dead through the underworld and prepared for the tomb of the royal scribe Ramos. In the vignette, Ramos walks alongside a jackal, which may represent the jackal-headed god Wepwawet, pathfinder of the military and guardian of the dead.
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White lines can be seen along the top and bottom of the jackal’s body and along the front of its hind legs. “It’s as if someone saw the jackal as it was originally drawn and said, ‘It’s too fat, make it thinner,’ so the artist made a Wite-Out … to restore it,” Helen Strudwick, the museum’s senior Egyptologist and exhibition curator, said in a statement.
“We’ve been using different analytical techniques to figure out the composition of this white paint,” Strudwick said. “The results show that it is a mixture of calcite and calcite. Images taken using 3D digital microscopy show that it also contains flecks of orpiment (a yellow pigment), possibly to allow it to blend better with fresh papyrus, which is originally a light cream color.”
Struwick said she later saw the same technique used on other Egyptian documents, including the British Museum’s Nacht Book of the Dead and the Uyah Papyrus at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. “When I pointed this out to curators, they were surprised,” she said. “It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice at first.”
The Book of the Dead of Ramos was discovered in 1922 in Sidement, Egypt. Parts of the scroll will be on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition until April 12.
