Assessment of Deterioration and Conservation of a Polychrome Wooden Coffin, from Al-Arish Museum, Egypt

Abstract

This paper describes the deterioration and preservation of an Ancient Egyptian polychrome wooden coffin, dating back to the 1st century. Common deterioration problems are the wood splitting and cracking, detachment of ground and paint layers, fungal damage, dirt adhesion and staining. The project entails securing the severely damaged wood, preparation of lime layer, the painting layer, and paint layer to a substrate, by consolidation, cleaning, dust removal and treatment of the degraded wood. Qualitative analysis of samples selected from the coffin, was reported. Studies that includes the identification of wood species, ground layer, paint layer, binding medium and microbiological identification were made. Several analytical methods were employed in the identification processes such as the Light optical microscopy (LOM), Scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive X-ray analyzer (SEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The obtained data were used to evaluate the deterioration status of the coffin and to establish suitable treatment methods.

Keywords

• polychrome wooden coffin
• biodeterioration
• wood identification
• treatment