Mer-Neith-it-es - Recolouring the coffin, Collaborative project

In 2018, the discovery of a partially preserved mummy inside a faded 2600-year-old sarcophagus at the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum gained international media attention. Senior Curator Dr. James Fraser immediately gathered a cross-institutional team of researchers with the goal of revealing more about the occupant, a priestess of the temple of Sekhmet, Mer-Neith-it-es. I worked alongside University of Newcastle researchers Dr Bernadette Drabsch and Luke O’Donnell were to digitally re-colour a high-definition 3D scan of the sarcophagus and produce an educational animation for museum display. This task was undertaken with the assistance of archaeologists (USyd), Egyptologists, Radiologists (Macquarie University) and a team of Scientists from Sydney Analytical, who helped to determine the original pigment colours through FTIR reflectance spectroscopy (infrared), Raman spectroscopy and pXRF analysis.

Working as a part of the creative team on this project realised a 5 minute animation that now sits on the wall above the sarcophagus as a permanent display at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. This display gives context to the artefact and a glimpse of what it would have looked like when it was made over 2500 years ago. Our journey as a creative team is recorded in a book chapter for the book “Speak My Name”. This book tells the story of the much larger project documenting all the mummies held in the Nicholson Collection as a part of Sydney Universities Chau Chak Wing Museum.