Bronze Casting Artefacts from the Qubbet el-Hawa – Moulds, Materials, and Experimental Methods

Auenmüller Johannes, Verly Georges, Rademakers Frederik W.

Abstract

The Egyptian Museum of Bonn University (Germany) holds a unique collection of casting moulds that were discovered in 1969 in tomb 207 of the Qubbet el-Hawa necropolis (Aswân/Egypt). Notwithstanding questions about their deposition and function in a funerary context, they enable both Egyptologists and natural scientists to fully study Late Period solid bronze casting technology. The casting moulds portray all steps of the casting process as well as some failed casting attempts. Thanks to the employment of a wide range of state-of-the-art methods of material analysis in the course of an initial research project at Bonn, new light could be shed on the making and technology of the casting moulds as well as their material composition. In addition, some remarkable cases for the mending of bronze Osiris figures and fragments could be detected. Here, the first deliberations and results of a collaborative follow-up research project with EACOM are presented. The ongoing research is especially dedicated to the development of an experimental methodology to better understand the functionality of these casting moulds.