2020 marks 100 years since the creation of the ‘Research Laboratory’ – a space for developing and conducting scientific research and conservation on the British Museum collection. Museum staff were quick to recognise the value of the laboratory’s work and, over the past century, scientists and conservators at the Museum have performed painstaking, groundbreaking work to improve our understanding of the collection and to care for it for the benefit of future generations.
To kick-start our year of celebration, we’re pleased to share some of our favourite stories from recent years. We hope you enjoy them. Please keep an eye out over the coming months as we share recent conservation success stories, the latest applications of scientific research and report news of the latest work from both the Scientific Research and Collection Care teams. Carl Heron, Director of Scientific Research and Sandra Smith, Head of Collection Care
Breaking down black ‘goo’
Research Assistant Dr Kate Fulcher’s analysis of the mysterious black ‘goo’ found in ancient Egyptian coffins, on the Museum podcast, makes for compelling listening. After analysing “crumbly black stuff” (her words) found in tombs at Amara West for her PhD, Kate was inspired to continue looking into unusual funerary substances, and so began to research mummy goo.
The goo – a black liquid that was applied to coffins during funerals – was poured over the outside of the coffin, the mummy case (the box between the mummy and the coffin), or the wrapped body itself. In some cases, the dead person had only a small amount of goo poured onto their face, in others a large amount was poured into their coffin.
Mummy of Pedihorpakhered in wooden coffin. Thebes, Egypt, 22nd dynasty (945 – 720 BC).
Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (a type of chemical analysis) revealed that the goo is made up of plant oils, animal fat, beeswax and bitumen. The analysis was performed on tiny samples, so Kate and her team were able to understand the components of the goo while still leaving the coffins entirely intact.
Mummy of Djedkhonsiufankh in wooden coffin. Egypt, 22nd dynasty (945 – 720 BC)
You can hear more about Kate’s work on black goo in the May episode of the Museum podcast, or read her blog here. Kate’s research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Exploring X-rays
Not many people know that the Museum has its very own X-ray lab, headed up by Dr Dan O’Flynn – X-ray Imaging Scientist and self-styled Curator of Photons. It sits four floors down, in the bowels of the Museum, and was purpose-built with extra-thick walls to prevent X-rays leaking into the building. An incredible six metres tall, the X-ray room itself is large enough to house even the largest objects in the collection and the equipment can support weights of up to 2,000kg.
Dr Dan O’Flynn at work in the Museum’s X-ray lab.
Dan’s findings include information about the assembly of the Townley Discobolus, showing how the limbs of the 800kg ancient Roman statue were attached to the body. This information is particularly pertinent to the statue’s outstretched throwing arm which comprises several fragments joined together and is otherwise unsupported. Identifying if and where metal dowels have been used inside a joint means that the stability of the object can confidently be assessed. This helps conservators determine what treatment the object requires so they can ensure its safety for future display.
The Townley Discobolus in the X-ray room.
But it’s not just large objects that benefit from a trip to Dan’s lair; X-ray imaging has revealed mummified snakes hiding inside an ornately wrapped ancient Egyptian bundle, the cuneiform writing on a 4,000 year-old tablet sealed in clay, and even the contents of a Kinder Surprise.
You can hear more about what it’s like in the X-ray lab on the September 2019 episode of the Museum podcast.
CT-scanning Afghan sculptures
At the end of 2019, curator St John Simpson told us how the Museum is helping to identify and return looted objects to Afghanistan, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Among the 2,345 objects that the Museum has helped to return over the past decade are a group of Buddhist sculptures from Afghanistan. Seized as part of an operation involving the Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police, the sculptures were brought to the Museum for identification. They date from between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, when Buddhism was the main religion in Afghanistan.
Seized Buddhist sculptures on temporary display in Room 53.
St John explained how scientific analysis – carried out by Dr Joanne Dyer – of the 1,500-year-old stone sculptures revealed the nature of the pigments used on the objects’ heads. Through this work we were able to ascertain that the red pigment was made from iron-rich ore and applied over a carbon black layer to deepen the colour. The sculptures were also CT-scanned to determine how the heads were made. The scans revealed a two-layered construction: a centre of coarse clay, overlaid with a finer and more compact material which was then painted.
(L) Moulded and painted clay head of a female bodhisattva wearing a diadem (crown). (R) Image highlighting the red pigment.
Decoding ancient tattoos
In 2018 the Museum made headlines around the world with the discovery of the oldest figurative tattoos in the world. Curator of Bioarchaeology Daniel Antoine (who works closely with the Department of Scientific Research) and his team used infrared scanning of two 5,000-year-old natural mummies – known as ‘Gebelein Man A’ and ‘Gebelein Woman’ – to reveal a range of tattoos on the pair.
Curator of Bioarchaeology Daniel Antoine explains how his team discovered the earliest known figurative tattoos in the world.
Both mummies were discovered around 100 years ago, but the markings on the pair remained unexamined. When Daniel’s team re-examined them for signs of body modification, they found that Gebelein Man A has a tattoo of two horned animals on his arm. These have been identified as a bull and a Barbary sheep.
Detail of S-shaped tattoos on the Predynastic female mummy from Gebelein.
The Gebelein Woman has a series of ‘S’ shapes on her shoulder – a motif also found on pottery of the same period. Below it, on her arm, is a linear design, perhaps a baton for a ritual dance or a crooked stave, symbolising power.
More science and conservation stories
We’ll be sharing our favourite Conservation projects and revealing new work from both the Department of Scientific Research and the Department of Collection Care over the coming year. Stay tuned to find out more about the amazing work that goes on behind the scenes here at the Museum to help us care for the collection and continue uncovering stories from history. If you’d like to find out more about any of the terms used in this blog, head to our Scientific Research, Care of Collection and Conservation glossary.
2020 marks 100 years since the creation of the ‘Research Laboratory’ – a space for developing and conducting scientific research and conservation on the British Museum collection. Museum staff were quick to recognise the value of the laboratory’s work and, over the past century, scientists and conservators at the Museum have performed painstaking, groundbreaking work to improve our understanding of the collection and to care for it for the benefit of future generations.
To kick-start our year of celebration, we’re pleased to share some of our favourite stories from recent years. We hope you enjoy them. Please keep an eye out over the coming months as we share recent conservation success stories, the latest applications of scientific research and report news of the latest work from both the Scientific Research and Collection Care teams.
Carl Heron, Director of Scientific Research and Sandra Smith, Head of Collection Care
Breaking down black ‘goo’
Research Assistant Dr Kate Fulcher’s analysis of the mysterious black ‘goo’ found in ancient Egyptian coffins, on the Museum podcast, makes for compelling listening. After analysing “crumbly black stuff” (her words) found in tombs at Amara West for her PhD, Kate was inspired to continue looking into unusual funerary substances, and so began to research mummy goo.
The goo – a black liquid that was applied to coffins during funerals – was poured over the outside of the coffin, the mummy case (the box between the mummy and the coffin), or the wrapped body itself. In some cases, the dead person had only a small amount of goo poured onto their face, in others a large amount was poured into their coffin.
Mummy of Pedihorpakhered in wooden coffin. Thebes, Egypt, 22nd dynasty (945 – 720 BC).
Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (a type of chemical analysis) revealed that the goo is made up of plant oils, animal fat, beeswax and bitumen. The analysis was performed on tiny samples, so Kate and her team were able to understand the components of the goo while still leaving the coffins entirely intact.
Mummy of Djedkhonsiufankh in wooden coffin. Egypt, 22nd dynasty (945 – 720 BC)
You can hear more about Kate’s work on black goo in the May episode of the Museum podcast, or read her blog here.
Kate’s research is funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Exploring X-rays
Not many people know that the Museum has its very own X-ray lab, headed up by Dr Dan O’Flynn – X-ray Imaging Scientist and self-styled Curator of Photons. It sits four floors down, in the bowels of the Museum, and was purpose-built with extra-thick walls to prevent X-rays leaking into the building. An incredible six metres tall, the X-ray room itself is large enough to house even the largest objects in the collection and the equipment can support weights of up to 2,000kg.
Dr Dan O’Flynn at work in the Museum’s X-ray lab.
Dan’s findings include information about the assembly of the Townley Discobolus, showing how the limbs of the 800kg ancient Roman statue were attached to the body. This information is particularly pertinent to the statue’s outstretched throwing arm which comprises several fragments joined together and is otherwise unsupported. Identifying if and where metal dowels have been used inside a joint means that the stability of the object can confidently be assessed. This helps conservators determine what treatment the object requires so they can ensure its safety for future display.
The Townley Discobolus in the X-ray room.
But it’s not just large objects that benefit from a trip to Dan’s lair; X-ray imaging has revealed mummified snakes hiding inside an ornately wrapped ancient Egyptian bundle, the cuneiform writing on a 4,000 year-old tablet sealed in clay, and even the contents of a Kinder Surprise.
You can hear more about what it’s like in the X-ray lab on the September 2019 episode of the Museum podcast.
CT-scanning Afghan sculptures
At the end of 2019, curator St John Simpson told us how the Museum is helping to identify and return looted objects to Afghanistan, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Among the 2,345 objects that the Museum has helped to return over the past decade are a group of Buddhist sculptures from Afghanistan. Seized as part of an operation involving the Art and Antiques Unit of the Metropolitan Police, the sculptures were brought to the Museum for identification. They date from between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, when Buddhism was the main religion in Afghanistan.
Seized Buddhist sculptures on temporary display in Room 53.
St John explained how scientific analysis – carried out by Dr Joanne Dyer – of the 1,500-year-old stone sculptures revealed the nature of the pigments used on the objects’ heads. Through this work we were able to ascertain that the red pigment was made from iron-rich ore and applied over a carbon black layer to deepen the colour. The sculptures were also CT-scanned to determine how the heads were made. The scans revealed a two-layered construction: a centre of coarse clay, overlaid with a finer and more compact material which was then painted.
(L) Moulded and painted clay head of a female bodhisattva wearing a diadem (crown). (R) Image highlighting the red pigment.
Decoding ancient tattoos
In 2018 the Museum made headlines around the world with the discovery of the oldest figurative tattoos in the world. Curator of Bioarchaeology Daniel Antoine (who works closely with the Department of Scientific Research) and his team used infrared scanning of two 5,000-year-old natural mummies – known as ‘Gebelein Man A’ and ‘Gebelein Woman’ – to reveal a range of tattoos on the pair.
Curator of Bioarchaeology Daniel Antoine explains how his team discovered the earliest known figurative tattoos in the world.
Both mummies were discovered around 100 years ago, but the markings on the pair remained unexamined. When Daniel’s team re-examined them for signs of body modification, they found that Gebelein Man A has a tattoo of two horned animals on his arm. These have been identified as a bull and a Barbary sheep.
Detail of S-shaped tattoos on the Predynastic female mummy from Gebelein.
The Gebelein Woman has a series of ‘S’ shapes on her shoulder – a motif also found on pottery of the same period. Below it, on her arm, is a linear design, perhaps a baton for a ritual dance or a crooked stave, symbolising power.
More science and conservation stories
We’ll be sharing our favourite Conservation projects and revealing new work from both the Department of Scientific Research and the Department of Collection Care over the coming year. Stay tuned to find out more about the amazing work that goes on behind the scenes here at the Museum to help us care for the collection and continue uncovering stories from history.
‘Truth is a big table and everybody’s got to sit at it.’
This is the quote that a critic selected in a review of my new podcast, an Audible Original series, In Search of Black History.
That’s me. I want to, need to, and I will find my seat at the ‘Truth Table’.
In a British Museum blog from September 2014, I wrote this: ‘Before I first entered the British Museum, I had dreamed about it, refashioned it to fit me.’
I wrote this but did not quite understand what I had written then. It was a feeling more than anything else.
I also wrote that it was hard to come into the Museum at first. The theatre I worked for at the time gave me a Reader’s Card to the British Library, then still inside the British Museum. I remember walking up the stairs of the building I had read about in the Encyclopedia Britannica that our father subscribed to and that I read with him when I was a little girl.
I remember that, when I became a Trustee of the Museum, a good friend of mine said she couldn’t go inside. Not into a storehouse of imperial loot. And how could I?
This year I am curating ‘The Era of Reclamation.’, a series of conversations, which the Director of the Museum, Hartwig Fischer, has taken an active and supporting part in helping to frame. These conversations are all about reclaiming.
Reclaiming is at the heart of many of the great questions and movements of our part of the 21st century. From the return of African objects to their places of origin, all the way to the renaming of our very selves.
My own reclamation in this ‘Era of Reclamation’ is of what I call ‘The Boat”. ‘The Boat’ is the slave ship, the vehicle of deportation and exile, into what could have only been seen by the victims of the slave trade as the void. But for me, ‘The Boat’ is also the vehicle on which a kind of big bang occurred. A change. And a new people were born.
This birth was not simply a matter of the defeat and subjugation of the African nations that made up what was called the ‘slave coast’. This new people, my people, were also fashioned out of a true ‘clash of civilisations’ between Europe and Africa.
‘The Boat’ is an expanding story, still unfolding.
Inside Room 41, showcasing the Museum’s Anglo-Saxon collections.
Recently a friend suggested that I pour a libation inside the British Museum. I asked him, ‘a libation of cleansing, or one of thanksgiving?’ Thanksgiving, for example, for the fact that I discovered I love the Anglo-Saxons at the Museum. No, not the white supremacists and other evil people who have appropriated their name. The real ones. The ones way-back-when with their beautiful and intricate objects. Their love of learning. Their lives and their colourful world, almost erased by the destruction of the monasteries and churches in the 16th century, by Henry VIII.
I’m interested in their story and everything about them: the objects associated with them. The fact that a queen known as the Lady of Mercia handed her queenship on to her daughter, the only time this has happened in English history. I’m fascinated too by their journey from their native lands, around what is now Germany and the Netherlands.
The Meroë Head. Roman, 27–25 BC. On display in Room 70.
I love that they have, on the surface anyway, nothing to do with me at all. At the British Museum, the Anglo Saxons exist in the same building as the objects and other artefacts of the queens of Kush, now modern-day Sudan. Not for them the super-slim Egyptians. The people of Kush loved big ladies and revelled in their bigness. Their queens were so fierce that the rocks that the Romans made as weapons sometimes had a curse on them directed at the queen. Between the Kushite and Roman empires it was personal. One of the queens took the head off a statue of the Roman emperor Augustus and buried it in the ground so that people would actually walk on the head of the emperor. That object is called the Meroë Head. You can see it at the Museum in Room 70. And it’s free.
The conversations that make up ‘The Era of Reclamation’ ask questions like: is there a diminution of the African Caribbean voice in the British public sphere? Does the LGBTQ community point a way out of the ‘Wakanda-isation’* of African history and towards a ‘meta Africa’ – a new space that exists not only in Africa, but in Europe, the Americas, the world. Has diversity devolved into a business? And what does diversity really mean? What are we being diverse from?
Bonnie Greer OBE and Director Hartwig Fischer in Room 70.
I still do dream about the British Museum as an arena of possibilities A field of dreams that encourages us to go beyond ourselves. And it is a temple too. In which we erect what we choose. And take it down. And rebuild. Constantly.
‘The Era of Reclamation’ event series curated by Bonnie Greer will be taking place at the Museum throughout January and February 2020. The series provides a challenging, thought-provoking and radical forum for debate around one of the most vital issues facing museums and cultural spaces in the UK and globally.
In Search of Black History with Bonnie Greer OBE (10 January 2020) – find out more and book tickets here.
Bonnie Greer OBE and June Sarpong MBE in conversation (24 January 2020) – find out more and book tickets here.
*Wakanda is a fictional Sub-Saharan African country, created by Marvel Comics and home to the superhero Black Panther.
