The gold appliqués from the tomb of Tutankhamun - Studies on the cultural communication between Egypt and the Ancient Near East.

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The project aims at the restoration, the archaeological, technical and archaeometrical investigation and the comparative iconographic and art historical study of 88 gold sheet appliqués with figurative decoration from the tomb of Tutankhamun dating to the 14th century BC. This research is an important issue of Egyptology, because it is the only group of objects from Tutankhamuns tomb, which has not yet been studied in a satisfactory way. Because of the frequent presence of Near Eastern motifs on the gold sheets the project is organized by the DAI Kairo in collaboration with Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Tübingen. This enables a study of the exchange of motifs and cultural communication between Egypt and the Near East in the second millennium BC. Due to the high amount of necessary restoration work and the utility of scientific analysis of the material, the RGZM Mainz has been appointed as third project partner. The focus of the project is directed towards an iconographic and functional characterization of the objects and the scientific investigation of gold composition, of the type and material of the backings of the gold sheets and the production techniques. With regard to iconography, both Egyptian and 'international' motifs, sometimes connected to each other, can be observed in the depictions on the gold sheets. This has been regarded by different scholars as an indication that these objects belong the the so-called International Style of the Late Bronze Age in the Near East, the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. This assumption will be critically revised in this project. As it was detected during the first phase of the project (2014-2016) that far more pieces of golds sheet objects are present than expected, an extension of the project for one year, until December 2017, is sought for in this application.