Ancient handprint found on 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifact ahead of UK museum exhibit

A rare handprint left by an ancient Egyptian potter has been discovered on a 4,000-year-old clay artifact, British researchers revealed on Monday. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge announced that the imprint was found on the base of a “soul house” — a clay offering tray shaped like a building — believed to have been used in tombs to present food offerings or as dwellings for the dead.

The artifact, dated between 2055–1650 BC, was being prepared for display in the museum’s upcoming exhibition Made in Ancient Egypt when the discovery was made.

“I have never seen such a complete handprint on an Egyptian object before,” said Helen Strudwick, senior curator and Egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Conservators found the handprint while examining the object’s underside. It is believed to have been unintentionally left by the potter who handled the tray before it was dried and fired. “When you see something like this, you feel very close to the person who left their mark on an object,” Strudwick told AFP, describing it as an “exciting moment.”

“You can see all the fingers, and also where the heel of the hand rested,” she added.

The clay imprint will be one of the highlights of the exhibition, opening on October 3, which explores the makers of ancient Egyptian objects such as ceramics, jewellery, and sculpture. The museum has been conducting ongoing research into Egyptian craftsmanship since 2014.

According to Strudwick, understanding how these objects were made is essential to preserving them properly. However, little is known about the lives of ancient Egyptian potters. Seen as producing objects of lesser value, potters may have held a lower social status than other artisans.

“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,” Strudwick said. “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 noted that the contributions of Egyptian craftspeople have often been overlooked in historical narratives. But she emphasized that with the help of modern 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.”

The Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition will also feature a major loan from the Louvre Museum in Paris — the most significant collection of Egyptian antiquities to come to the UK in nearly two decades.

- with inputs from AFP