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Animal mummification was commonplace in ancient Egypt, with the remains of many animals placed inside statues or votive boxes with representations of animals or hybrid human–animal creatures. Votive boxes were made from a variety of materials and often sealed; some boxes are still preserved in this state in museum collections. A prior study of sealed copper alloy votive boxes from the collection of the British Museum used X-ray computed tomography to search for animal remains, where poor image quality resulted due to attenuation from the boxes and apparent dense metals inside. In this study, neutron tomography was applied to six of the votive boxes previously examined. Animal remains, likely from lizards, and fragments of textile wrappings were discovered inside three of the boxes. Evidence of the manufacturing process and subsequent repairs of the boxes were uncovered by neutrons. Significant quantities of lead were also identified in three boxes. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of neutron tomography for the study of mummified remains inside sealed metal containers, and give evidence linking the animal figures represented on top of votive boxes to the concealed remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A probe that binds to unfixed collagen fibrils was used to image the shapes and fibrous properties of the TM and BM. The probe (CNA35) is derived from the bacterial adhesion protein CNA. We present confocal images of hydrated gerbil TM, BM, and other cochlear structures stained with fluorescently labeled CNA35. A primary purpose of this article is to describe the use of the CNA35 collagen probe in the cochlea. Methods: Recombinant poly-histidine-tagged CNA35 was expressed in Escherichia coli, purified by cobalt-affinity chromatography, fluorescence labeled, and further purified by gel filtration chromatography. Cochleae from freshly harvested gerbil bullae were irrigated with and then incubated in CNA35 for periods ranging from 2 h — overnight. The cochleae were fixed, decalcified, and dissected. Isolated cochlear turns were imaged by confocal microscopy. Results: The CNA35 probe stained the BM and TM, and volumetric imaging revealed the shape of these structures and the collagen fibrils within them. The limbal zone of the TM stained intensely. In samples from the cochlear base, intense staining was detected on the side of the TM that faces hair cells. In the BM pectinate zone, staining was intense at the upper and lower boundaries. The BM arcuate zone was characterized by a prominent longitudinal collagenous structure. The spiral ligament, limbus and lamina stained for collagen, and within the spiral limbus the habenula perforata were outlined with intense staining. Conclusion: The CNA35 probe provides a unique and useful view of collagenous structures in the cochlea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitisation of museum exhibits has played an essential role in geomatics research for generating digital replicas, as it offers the chance to address rather challenging issues. The use of different sensors, ranging from active to passive, and also structured light scanners or hybrid solutions, the various destinations and purposes of the final results combined with the extreme variety of possible objects have made it a field of investigation highly inquired in the literature.The present study aims to analyse and discuss a digitalisation workflow applied to four Sumerian civilisation masterpieces preserved in the British Museum. The dense and accurate 3D point clouds derived from a specimen of Articulated Arm Coordinate Measuring Machines in collaboration with Faro technologies have twofold roles: ground truth and geometric reference of the final digital replicas. Digital photogrammetry is employed to enrich the models with the relevant radiometric component. The significant contribution results, exploiting co-registration strategies, offer careful guidance of a photogrammetric protocol created in a highly controlled environment combined with skilful expedients and devices. The proposed approach enables the acquisition of high-quality and radiometrically balanced images and improves the possibility of automating the masking procedure before the photogrammetric processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally assumed that anthropological artefacts are fundamentally different from art works. This article questions aspects of this distinction by exploring the role of curators in anthropological collections, with a focus on the Africa Galleries at the British Museum. It looks at the complexities faced by the curators of a controversial collection, which is contested as 'heritage' and the curatorial practices used to address it in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. It explores questions such as: can curatorial work narrate the Other outside power structures? How might it narrate other cultures? And can there be collaborations across cultures without collapsing into existing power structures? Johannes Fabian has argued that ethnography has two 'moments': the first involves close exchange and collaboration with other communities during field trips. The second involves the construction of an unchanging temporality through which another culture becomes Other and thus excluded from change. This exclusion applies a power relationship. The article demonstrates how the curators sought to develop exhibitions which critiqued the second moment and built on the first by collaborating with living artists. In so doing the curators also questioned the status of works in anthropological collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recounts the story of an outstanding and yet little-known eighteenth-century character, the collector of sacred art Alessandro Matterozzi (1713–1783). He displayed in his family palace in Urbania (Marche, Italy), among paintings and antiquities, a select collection of Early Christian gold-glass, a form of decorative glass made of two layers of glass with a design in gold leaf fused between them. The seventeen pieces acquired from his collection by the British Museum consist of the bases of glass vessels found mainly in Early Christian catacombs. The drawings filed in Gaetano Marini's sylloge entitled 'Inscriptiones christianae' (1765–1801), now in the Vatican Library, together with other newly studied written sources, document how Matterozzi assembled one of the largest gold-glass collections of his time, which was later added to the collections of the British Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the exhibit "China's Hidden Century" at the British Museum in London, from May 18, 2023 to October 8, 2023.

The authors evaluate the symbolic value of the 91 rules published in 1841, as incipit of the first volume of the Catalogue of printed books of the British Museum, declaring its founding basis, and legitimizing the growing reputation of Antonio Panizzi at the same time. Monument of the élites and Trustees of the British Museum Library, the 91 were preceded by 73 rules, printed and distributed only among the cataloguers of the library in March 1839. The essay explains the existence of a normative stratification and evolution of the rules (oral tradition, limited circulation, revision and wider diffusion) and therefore the need for an archeology of knowledge’s approach. The novelties of the first cataloging code reside in the passage from an empirical to a conscious approach to the functions of the catalogue, while the printing of the catalogue is considered by Panizzi an antieconomical manifestation. The catalogue had not yet found its expressive paradigm, consolidated only today in the format of an open digital work, constantly updated.

The paper, starting from the draft of 73 Rules Museum proposed by Panizzi to the Trustees in March 1839, aims at bringing out Panizzi’s underlying design for the new alphabetical catalog of the British Museum. Two temporal perspectives are crossed in contextualizing the process of drafting the rules: one of shorter duration, with a focus on items and actors of a confrontation that became intense between 1834 and 1839; and another, of a wider time span, aimed at reconstructing the conflicts of bibliographic cultures, the lines of tradition and the originality of Panizzi’s approach. At the bottom of the draft, there is an intellectual wager: although in the context constraints, to go beyond the boundaries of the English bibliographic traditions of the time by opening up to other bibliographic cultures. The most stimulating perspective comes from Audiffredi’s lesson mediated by a principle of exactitude which, if in the most immediate references has roots in the highest peaks of the contemporary French bibliographic culture (Barbier and Querard), draws its sap from the erudite tradition of the Italian eighteenth century (Tiraboschi). The paper discusses whether and what changes were made to this design in the passage from 73 to 91.