Rare 4000-years-old handprint reveals the forgotten potters of ancient Egypt
A 4,000-year-old handprint was discovered on an ancient Egyptian artifact named 'soul house.'
The artifact was prepared for the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
The handprint, dating back to the Middle Kingdom era (2055–1650 BC), marks a rare discovery.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge discovered the handprint while getting artifacts ready for an exhibition.
As a result, the findings would be displayed in the school's Made in Ancient Egypt expo at the inauguration of the Fitzwilliam Museum in October, as reported by the BBC.
The handprint was discovered on a "soul house," which is a kind of clay model made to resemble a dwelling and left in graves as a sacrifice to the deceased.
A complete, well-defined handprint can be seen beneath the base of the soul house, which dates to the Middle Kingdom era of Egypt, between 2055 and 1650 BC.
"We've spotted traces of fingerprints left in wet varnish or on a coffin in the decoration, but it is rare and exciting to find a complete handprint underneath this soul house,' Ms Strudwick, senior egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam Museum, stated.
"This was left by the maker who touched it before the clay dried. I have never seen such a complete handprint on an Egyptian object before," she added.
The soul house was likely built using a wooden framework covered in clay to create a two-storey structure supported by pillars.
The wooden core burnt away during the kiln-firing process, leaving behind voids.
Loaves of bread, lettuce, and an ox's head are among the symbolic food offerings shown on the model's open front section.
Although ancient Egyptian pottery was widely utilized and manufactured in large quantities, little is known about the craftspeople who created it.
Potters were frequently of lesser social standing than goldsmiths or stonemasons.
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Because chemicals absorb and emit light at characteristic wavelengths, when light from a parent star passes through a planet's atmosphere, the molecules in that atmosphere leave their telltale fingerprints in the spectrum of starlight. "With four additional transit observations using JWST, we have measured the spectrum of K2-18 b's atmosphere with unprecedented precision," Renyu Hu, the new study's team leader and a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientist, told "The spectrum allowed us to conclusively detect both methane and carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere and to constrain their abundances. This information points to a planet with a water-rich interior." Hu explained that the team searched for signals of dimethyl sulfide and other organic sulfur molecules in the spectrum using several independent models, but did not find conclusive evidence for their presence. "This was not necessarily disappointing," Hu continued. "We're excited about establishing the planet's water-rich nature." 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However, Hu cautioned that the spectrum detected by the JWST could also be explained by an alternative model in which the atmosphere actually contains abundant water vapor. Establishing whether K2-18 b and other similar temperate, sub-Neptune-sized planets possess liquid water oceans, Hu says, will also require detecting the presence of a broader set of atmospheric gases beyond methane and carbon dioxide. It would also require an absence of molecules like ammonia, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide, which, as of yet, have indeed not been detected in the atmosphere of K2-18 b "This conclusion is based on theoretical work by my group and several others," Hu added. "With the new observations providing valuable context, we've summarized these insights into a roadmap to help guide future observations and studies." Meanwhile, the search for the biosignatures, dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, is far from done; while not hitting the significance level required for a confirmation, this research did provide a stronger signal from these molecules than were provided by previous examinations. "The evidence for dimethyl sulfide in the present work is significantly higher than what we had with our previous observations in the same near-infrared wavelength range," Madhusudhan said. "However, this evidence is still not high enough to claim a conclusive detection. "We also need to be able to distinguish dimethyl sulfide from other possible contributors, such as methyl mercaptan, which is also a biosignature on Earth." 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