Advanced investigation of the Book of the Dead of Kha at the Museo Egizio of Turin: A MOLAB E-RIHS in-situ study

In February 2024, an exhaustive analytical study was conducted at the Museo Egizio in Turin within the frame of the MOLAB platform of the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science, E-RIHS. The research project was designed to investigate the painting materials, technique, and conservation state of the ‘Book of the Dead’ of Kha (Suppl. 8438), a remarkably well-preserved funerary papyrus from the Eighteenth Dynasty. Despite numerous studies and analytical projects conducted on the artifact, a com- prehensive investigation had yet to be carried out. Accessing the facilities of E-RIHS, the study employed a multi-analytical approach in situ, integrating advanced portable and non-invasive imaging and single- point techniques, including macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) scanning, VIS, UVL and IR technical pho- tography, VIS-NIR hyperspectral imaging (HSI), high-resolution digital microscopy (HRDM), macro X-ray diffraction (MA-XRD) mapping, Raman spectroscopy, VIS-NIR and external reflection FTIR spectroscopy. Imaging and scanning methods allowed for the macro-scale definition of the pigment palette and artis- tic technique, targeting key areas for further investigation by single-point analysis. This study, essential for deepening our understanding of the artifact, its materiality and history, is crucial in shedding light on certain aspects of scribal practices which remain poorly understood. It follows the approach recently applied to papyrology, which increasingly moves towards the definition of a ‘biography of the objects’, an approach that enables the reconstruction of contexts and histories from the materiality of the artifact.