British researchers have discovered a rare handprint on a 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifact, a Cambridge museum said on Monday.
The ancient handprint was discovered by museum conservators on the base of an Egyptian soul house – a clay offering tray in the shape of a building that may have been used in tombs for laying out food offerings or as a dwelling for the souls.
The unique discovery was made after the piece, crafted between 1650 and 2055 B.C., was examined by conservation staff in preparation for a new exhibition.
"I have never seen such a complete handprint on an Egyptian object before," said Helen Strudwick, senior curator and Egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The handprint was left by the maker of the soul house when they picked up the clay before drying and firing it.
"When you see something like this, you feel very close to the person who left their mark on an object," Strudwick said, describing the finding to Agence France-Presse (AFP) as an "exciting moment."
"You can see all the fingers and also where the heel of the hand rested," she said.
The rare artifact will be on display at the museum's "Made in Ancient Egypt" exhibition, which opens on Oct. 3.
The exhibition will focus on the makers of Egyptian artifacts, including jewelry, ceramics and sculpture.
It is essential to understand how the ancient objects were made "in order to look after them properly," the curator said.
The museum in southeast England has been researching the creation of these artifacts since 2014, but little is known about the potters who worked in Ancient Egypt.
Since pottery was considered of low value, Egyptian potters may have been accorded a lower social status than other craftspeople.
"We can't really say anything about the identity of the person from the handprint. It is quite small – about the same size as my own hand," said Strudwick.
"If this is a man's handprint, it's possible that – given the scale of it – he was a younger person, or it may be that a more junior person in the workshop was responsible for moving these objects out to dry," she speculated.
Strudwick notes that the history of Egyptian craftspeople has often been overlooked by researchers.
But with new research methods, "we are able to know more and more about how they worked, lived and how they wanted to be remembered for all time," she said.
The exhibition will feature a significant loan of antiquities from the Louvre Museum in France, the most substantial of its kind to visit the U.K. in nearly 20 years.
