For more than 1,500 years, Osiris—Egyptian god of the afterlife and the underworld and the dead—has led a parade of deities down the side of this wooden coffin to a table of offerings presented by the deceased. A tiny fleck of pigment plucked from the procession’s decorative border has revealed a surprise in the ancient artist’s paint formulation: plant proteins.
The discovery was made using paleoproteomics, a nontargeted analytical technique that allows scientists to identify all the proteins in a sample but is rarely used to analyze art. Clara Granzotto recalls methodically parsing the proteomic data she collected as a researcher at the University of Copenhagen. She had identified proteins she expected to see from various hoofed animals, known staples of ancient paint binders.
Proteomics of a speck of this green paint revealed the various animal proteins that scientists expect an ancient artisan to have used in their craft. Red paint in the scene’s decorative border, however, contained something unexpected: protein from the moringa tree. Credit:
Clara Granzotto/Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities
Then, one day, she leapt from her seat. She had found something new—moringa and sesame. “This is the first molecular evidence of the presence and use of materials from these two plants in painted artifacts from ancient Egypt,” says Granzotto, now a conservation scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago.
It’s impossible to ask the artist why they mixed these plant products into some paints but not others. But Granzotto thinks it was purposeful. The moringa tree was a symbol of Ptah, patron of craftsmen and artisans. Perhaps the Egyptian artist used the plant to “dedicate the artwork to the deity or to protect it.” As we enjoy the artwork centuries later, who could fault the technique?
Credit: Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm and Clara Granzotto. Read the paper in Science Advances.
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