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Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt
Animal mummification was commonplace in ancient Egypt, with the remains of many animals placed inside statues or votive boxes with representations of animals or hybrid human–animal creatures. Votive boxes were made from a variety of materials and often sealed; some boxes are still preserved in this...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10119080/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37081072 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30468-4 |
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author | O’Flynn, Daniel Fedrigo, Anna Perucchetti, Laura Masson-Berghoff, Aurélia |
author_facet | O’Flynn, Daniel Fedrigo, Anna Perucchetti, Laura Masson-Berghoff, Aurélia |
author_sort | O’Flynn, Daniel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Animal mummification was commonplace in ancient Egypt, with the remains of many animals placed inside statues or votive boxes with representations of animals or hybrid human–animal creatures. Votive boxes were made from a variety of materials and often sealed; some boxes are still preserved in this state in museum collections. A prior study of sealed copper alloy votive boxes from the collection of the British Museum used X-ray computed tomography to search for animal remains, where poor image quality resulted due to attenuation from the boxes and apparent dense metals inside. In this study, neutron tomography was applied to six of the votive boxes previously examined. Animal remains, likely from lizards, and fragments of textile wrappings were discovered inside three of the boxes. Evidence of the manufacturing process and subsequent repairs of the boxes were uncovered by neutrons. Significant quantities of lead were also identified in three boxes. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of neutron tomography for the study of mummified remains inside sealed metal containers, and give evidence linking the animal figures represented on top of votive boxes to the concealed remains. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10119080 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101190802023-04-22 Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt O’Flynn, Daniel Fedrigo, Anna Perucchetti, Laura Masson-Berghoff, Aurélia Sci Rep Article Animal mummification was commonplace in ancient Egypt, with the remains of many animals placed inside statues or votive boxes with representations of animals or hybrid human–animal creatures. Votive boxes were made from a variety of materials and often sealed; some boxes are still preserved in this state in museum collections. A prior study of sealed copper alloy votive boxes from the collection of the British Museum used X-ray computed tomography to search for animal remains, where poor image quality resulted due to attenuation from the boxes and apparent dense metals inside. In this study, neutron tomography was applied to six of the votive boxes previously examined. Animal remains, likely from lizards, and fragments of textile wrappings were discovered inside three of the boxes. Evidence of the manufacturing process and subsequent repairs of the boxes were uncovered by neutrons. Significant quantities of lead were also identified in three boxes. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of neutron tomography for the study of mummified remains inside sealed metal containers, and give evidence linking the animal figures represented on top of votive boxes to the concealed remains. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10119080/ /pubmed/37081072 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30468-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article O’Flynn, Daniel Fedrigo, Anna Perucchetti, Laura Masson-Berghoff, Aurélia Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title | Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title_full | Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title_fullStr | Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title_full_unstemmed | Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title_short | Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt |
title_sort | neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient egypt |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10119080/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37081072 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30468-4 |
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