Conservation of Artefacts
Many museums have their own Conservation Departments dedicated to the
care and maintenance of the artefacts they house.
The Royal Albert Memorial
Museum and Art Gallery is
lucky enough to have an
excellent Conservation
laboratory.
The team of highly qualified
staff use modern techniques
and state of the art technology
to take the very best care of
the artefacts in the museum.
Sometimes special projects
are undertaken to restore
items that have been
damaged at some time in the
past, donated to the museum
in a poor state of repair or
have simply aged with the
passing of time.
The conservation work carried
out on the
MUMMY BOARD OF
AU-SET-SHU-MUT
is a good example of such a
project.
The work took 985 hours to
complete, which is the longest
time spent on any single item
in the Museum, to date.
Before
After
The following article and photos have been provided by staff in the
Conservation Department at RAMM.
ANCIENT EGYPT:
THE MUMMY-BOARD OF AU-SET-SHU-MUT
This beautiful example of an Egyptian Mummy-Board was collected in
Thebes with other parts of the accompanying coffin ensemble by a Reverend
Fitzherbert Fuller in 1819, and some years later was donated to Exeter
Museum.
Mummy-Boards are an element of the sarcophagus (coffin) ensemble
consisting of five parts: An outer coffin and lid, an inner coffin and lid, and the
mummy-board which simply rests on top of the embalmed body. The use of
mummy-boards is very specific to the 19th - 21st Dynasties, and the style of
painting on this example allows it to be dated to the 21st Dynasty, between
1050 and 950 BC.
The board is carved from wood, and covered with a
priming layer of gesso (in which extra detail could be
modelled). This is painted with a standard range of
pigments, usually ground mineral earth colours in a
binder of albumin (egg white), gum or gelatine and in this
case including black (carbon): frit or ‘Egyptian Blue’ (a
copper-calcium-silicate): green frit: and red (anhydrous
iron oxide), all painted on a yellow background (of
hydrated iron oxide).
The figure is female and is painted in an idealistic (but
also realistic) style. She has been identified almost
certainly as ‘Au-set-shu-Mut’ who was thought to be a
musician and priestess of the god Amun-Re and
probably a member of the royal family of Thebes.
Figure 1: The mummy-board has been ‘restored’ at least
twice in the past and was composed of many fragments
before re-treatment. Earliest restoration included fixing
the fragments onto a wooden backboard with iron nails
and glue. Missing areas were filled with wood or a type
of ceramic material, then overpainted a dark reddishbrown.
Figure 2: Further previous restorations included
partial replacement of old fills with plaster, and
touching in both earlier and later fills, often covering
large areas of original material.
Figure 3: A detail of the old plaster and earlier fill
materials. This also shows the extent of damage by
wood-boring insects, which had made the wood
extremely unstable, powdery and sponge-like, no
longer able to support the gesso and paint layers.
Figure 4: Showing the Mummy-Board after re-treatment.
This treatment aimed to stabilise the endangered wood and
painted surface layers, and to remove all the damaging and
confusing fillings and overpaint to allow better interpretation
of the original. New fills have all been painted in a neutral
background colour. The project took about 960 hours to
complete.
The mummy board for Au-set-shu-Mut is now on public
display at RAMM.