ANALYTICAL STUDY AND CONSERVATION OF GILDED MUMMIFORM CARTONNAGE FROM THE GRECO- ROMAN PERIOD IN CAIRO MUSEUM

Abstract

The state of preservation of the Cartonnage collection stored in the basement of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, is very poor; it is suffering biodeterioration as a result of inappropriate storage. The analytical techniques utilized in this study : optical microscopy (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier trans- form infrared spectroscopes (FTIR). These analytical techniques aim to specify the layer structure of the car- tonnage (preparation layer, painted layer and gilded layer),they also identify the adhesives used to paste the layers of textile and in binding pigments and gilding. The treatment plan started with consolidating the fragile parts, removing the cotton bandages which we used to maintain the shape of the mask. Japanese tissue adhered with Klucel G is used to support the mask. Lenin ruptures were fixed and consolidated using Chitosan 5%.