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4,000-Year-Old Handprint Hidden Under an Egyptian 'Soul House' to Go on Display

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge will display a nearly complete handprint found on the underside of a 4,000-year-old clay "soul house," a funerary model used to hold offerings. Dated to about 2055–1650 B.C., the print was likely left when the potter picked the wet piece up to dry before firing. Curators call it a rare, intimate link to the maker, and the find supports the exhibition's goal of highlighting the lives of ancient craftsmen.

08:59 PM, 11/29/2025Culture
4,000-Year-Old Handprint Hidden Under an Egyptian 'Soul House' to Go on Display

A remarkably complete human handprint, left nearly 4,000 years ago on the underside of a clay funerary model, will soon go on public display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The imprint was discovered on the base of a miniature building known as a "soul house," used in ancient Egyptian tombs to hold food and other offerings for the deceased.

Museum researchers dated the model to roughly 2055–1650 B.C. and believe the print was made when the potter picked the still-wet piece up to move it to a drying area before firing. Because the mark is on the underside of the object, it would originally have been hidden from view.

How the model was made

Curators reconstruct that these models began as a simple framework of wooden sticks shaped into a small house; that frame was then coated with clay to produce what looks like a two-story building with pillars and stairs. After firing in a kiln, the wooden supports would burn away, leaving hollow interior spaces that mimic doorways, rooms and courtyards.

"We’ve seen traces of fingerprints on varnish or in decorative surfaces, but it is rare and exciting to find such a complete handprint underneath a soul house," said Helen Strudwick, senior Egyptologist and curator of the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. "This takes you directly to the moment when the object was made and to the person who made it."

Why it matters

Pottery and clay objects were ubiquitous in ancient Egypt, made from Nile silt or gathered shale, and potters usually occupied low social status. As a result, research often tells us more about the objects themselves than about the people who produced them. The Fitzwilliam’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition, opening in October, aims to address that imbalance by showing not just finished objects but also workshop records, delivery notes, receipts and unfinished pieces to reconstruct the lives and working conditions of ancient craftsmen.

Small, inadvertent traces such as this handprint provide a direct, humanizing connection to an individual artisan more than three millennia ago — a momentary, personal detail preserved by chance and now made visible to visitors.

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