Using some traditional and nanomaterials in the cleaning of ancient Egyptian pottery artifacts ( jar and shallow plate )

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ORIGINAL PAPER

Using some traditional and nanomaterials in the cleaning of ancient Egyptian pottery artifacts (jar and shallow plate) from Athribis Mohamed El-Gohary 1

&

Mohammed Saad 1

Received: 13 September 2020 / Accepted: 28 October 2020 / Published online: 16 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract The study applies mechanical, wet, and chemical cleaning to remove any undesired materials from artistic/historical pottery surfaces. It aims to evaluate the effects and efficiency of three types of cleansers: One in the nano form and two in the traditional form. These three cleansers are Triton-based microemulsion, Na2EDTA, and EDTA. They were applied as poultices to clean some ancient Egyptian pottery shreds. Euromex Netherland stereo microscope (SM), ESEM Quanta 250 FEG (SEM), and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) were adopted for investigating and analyzing the cleaned pottery sherds and the cleaning of extracted water to evaluate the efficiency of the aforementioned three poultices. The results showed that the Triton-based microemulsion poultice was ranked first, followed by Na2EDTA and finally EDTA with respect to the time of application and the target achievement. Thus, Triton-based microemulsion poultice was employed in the cleaning of two case studies excavated from Athribis (jar and plate). In conclusion, this poultice managed to remove all the accumulated deposits from the surfaces of the two pottery objects after 2 h, in addition to preventing the composition of light surface encrustations. Keywords Cleaning . Microemulsion . Nanomaterial . EDTA . Na2EDTA . Triton X-100 . Efficiency

Introduction Pottery, as the most abundant man-made product, is mostly deteriorated and contaminated due to several factors either before or after excavation. This process is identified before excavation as corrosion by liquids (Cooper 1970) and after excavation as corrosion by solids, where the crystalline materials contacted with other dominated solids (Shewmon 1994). It acts as a driving force for chemical potential gradient causing a chemical reaction on the surface leading to different deterioration features. Another mechanism may deteriorate pottery artifacts, i.e., corrosion by gases when exposed to water vapor that rapidly penetrates the material and causes corrosion (Exner and Hougardy 1988). Most pottery artifacts suffer severe deterioration processes both before and after excavation, especially those resulting from an aggressive burial environment (Saad 2018) through physical, chemical, and/or biological processes (Ágnes et al. 2012). These effects result

* Mohamed El-Gohary [email protected] 1

Conservation Department, Sohag University, Sohag 82524, Egypt

essentially from the absence of light, the frequent presence of salts in groundwater that is in contact with the complex corrosive soils (Arriba-Rodriguez et al. 2018), the stable AT and RH, and the limited access of oxygen (Sease 1994). In the study area, these processes are almost effective through

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