ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Applying neutron techniques to the earliest large hollow cast bronze statues from ancient Egypt

Abstract: This study concerns the origin of large hollow casting technique. It is well known that hollow bronze casting using the direct lost-wax technique is an ancient Egyptian invention, but traditionally it has been thought that the indirect lost-wax technique was introduced later, by the Greeks. However, the results of recent studies on some smaller ancient Egyptian statues suggest the ‘Greek’ invention of indirect lost-wax was pre-dated by several centuries, in ancient Egypt. In the proposed experiment we aim to use neutron imaging to study details of the production of three large hollow cast Egyptian statues, dated to the 9th-8th century BC. These statues have features that could suggest the use of the indirect lost-wax casting technique. This study will be fundamental to understand the development of the techniques used to cast large statues in ancient history.

Principal Investigator: Mr Paul Craddock
Experimenter: Mr Mark Haswell
Experimenter: Dr Daniel O'Flynn
Experimenter: Miss Caroline Barton
Local Contact: Dr Winfried Kockelmann
Experimenter: Ms Laura Perucchetti
Experimenter: Mr John Taylor
Experimenter: Ms Marie Vandenbeusch
Experimenter: Mr Duncan Hook
Experimenter: Mr Daniel O'Flynn
Experimenter: Ms Fleur Shearman
Experimenter: Dr Anna Fedrigo

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1820633

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1820633

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Mr Paul Craddock et al; (2019): Applying neutron techniques to the earliest large hollow cast bronze statues from ancient Egypt , STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1820633

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.