Fitzwilliam Museum Researchers Spot Modern Correction Fluid on Ancient Egyptian Papyri
A tiny patch of white on an Ancient Egyptian jackal has opened an unexpectedly modern conservation mystery in Cambridge. Researchers at The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge say they have identified what appears to be correction fluid — described in the museum’s materials as “Tipp-Ex” — applied to ancient papyri, likely to “fix” details that once looked wrong to a previous handler.
The clue emerged under high magnification. Using a 3D digital microscope, the team examined the back of a jackal figure and found that the white layer sits on top of the animal’s black pigment. In the same area, flecks of yellow orpiment are visible where the white coating thins, a detail that helped researchers understand the sequence of materials on the surface.
The finding has been linked to research around the Fitzwilliam’s exhibition Made in Ancient Egypt, which focuses on the working lives and technical knowledge of craftspeople in antiquity. While the show’s premise is rooted in ancient making, the newly identified “Tipp-Ex” points to a much later intervention — a reminder that museum objects often carry the traces of modern collecting, handling, and restoration.
According to the researcher Strudwick, the jackal is not an isolated case. She says she has noticed comparable uses of the white fluid on papyri in other UK museum collections, including the Book of the Dead of Nakht at the British Museum and the papyrus of Yuya associated with the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Strudwick has said she is not aware of the material being previously recognized or scientifically analyzed.
She also described the reaction when she flagged the substance to colleagues: curators at institutions holding objects with the same white coating were “astonished,” she said in a statement.
The correction-fluid discovery is not the first surprise to surface during preparations and research connected to Made in Ancient Egypt. In July 2025, the Fitzwilliam announced that its researchers had identified a handprint on an artefact slated for display, underscoring how close looking — and new imaging tools — can still yield fresh evidence from well-studied collections.
Visitors to the exhibition can also see parts of the papyrus of Ramose, which was excavated in 1922 from a tomb at Sedment, Egypt by the archaeologist William Flinders Petrie. The papyrus’s presence in the galleries situates the museum’s current research within a longer history of excavation, acquisition, and interpretation — and, now, the occasional modern “correction” that becomes visible only when technology and curiosity converge.
For conservators and curators, the implications are practical as well as historical: identifying later additions is essential to understanding what viewers are actually seeing, and to deciding how — or whether — to reverse past interventions. In this case, a thin veil of white on a jackal’s back has become a prompt to re-examine other papyri, and to ask how many similar edits have been hiding in plain sight.
