• 1 The description of the project and final remarks of this article are authored by C. Capu (...)
• 2 Uhlenbrock, 1993, p. 7-27; Frankfurter, 2014, p. 129-141; Frankfurter, 2018; Ballet, 202 (...)

1The study of material culture has traditionally been centred on monumental remains or ‘major arts’, such as sculpture, frescos and architecture. All this kind of evidence provides substantial information about temple worship and the perspectives of those who could afford to commission such elaborate artworks, but far less about household cult and life, that is, on non-elite practices. In contrast, terracotta figurines, being widely accessible artefacts, represent a valuable counterpart to more monumental items and can be useful to round out the picture of ancient cults.1 The production of terracotta figurines as an art form is germane to a number of ancient civilizations, and it carries, also, a certain social value, as can be seen from its place in creation myths. Even though they are relatively humble objects, terracotta figurines have been preserved in a better state than other more precious materials; they expose a rich and varied scenario that reveals much about beliefs, religion, the representation of divinities, and even social ideologies. However, even though the many historical interpretations and their high statistical presence suggest that their production represented a major activity during antiquity,2 they have been often qualified as a ‘minor’ production, due to the use of a poor material and the mass-production system that characterized them. Hence, their study can play a fundamental role in our understanding of bygone civilizations, especially of the non-elite part of the population. Due to their nature and purpose, it is important to understand that in the study of ancient terracotta figurines, the rewards are greatest when examining the broadest possible spectrum of production, rather than focusing on one individual figurine.

• 3 This is not the case of the Museo Egizio in Turin, which allows visitors and s (...)
• 4 Schürmann, 1989; Kaufmann, 1915; Perdrizet, 1921; Breccia, 1934; Graindor, 193 (...)
• 5 Bayer-Niemeier, 1988; Fischer, 1994; Ballet, 1995, p. 259-264; Török, 1995; Bailey, 2008 (...)
• 6 Allen, 1985; Szymańska, 2005; Caputo, 2012, p. 363-375; Bennett et al., 2016; PoŁudniki (...)
• 7 For an overview of developments in methods of digital imaging applied to artefacts and t (...)

2Undoubtedly, museum collections are one of the main sources to study these artefacts. Usually, only a few of them are displayed, selected among the others for iconographic and aesthetic reasons or known provenance, but it is not difficult to imagine that an unspecified number of specimens remains unpublished and unknown to both specialists and visitors.3 This is certainly understandable if we consider that these objects are produced in copious numbers, mostly in series, and not always entirely preserved. Even when they are worth publication, they have always been treated as objects of art and not as objects related to everyday life, so they have been rather selected on the basis of their entirety and described only from an iconographic and artistic point of view. However, since the end of the last century, traditional catalogues of collections,4 characterized by a purely descriptive, iconographic and historical-artistic approach, are starting to be replaced by an increasing number of advanced studies on terracotta figurines showing a growing interest in the characteristics of the material, and in production techniques and socio-cultural aspects.5 This is possible also thanks to a growing interest in reconstructing the material culture of ancient societies and to the closer comparison with similar artefacts coming from documented contexts resulting from modern archaeological excavations, based on scientific and systematic methodology.6 Furthermore, in the last ten years, 3D technologies spread significantly in archaeology, with multiple applications, both on the field and in the lab.7 3D modelling is becoming an essential tool and is transforming this field. So far, the analysis of artefacts has relied on direct physical access to objects, 2D representations (photographs and drawings), and written descriptions. The growing popularity of 3D technology has made it clear that a 3D model of an artefact provides a superior record, compared to its 2D counterpart, and an experience closer to the original. High-fidelity 3D digital models of artefacts can bridge the gap in the quality of the data available to researchers and they can also be shared widely, which facilitates and encourages scholarly collaboration. Indeed, the application of digital techniques and virtual 3D rendering in a more systematic way to different clusters of materials will facilitate the knowledge of and the access to surveyed terracotta figurines, even those preserved in ‘minor’ collections, in order to implement the comparative study of this category of objects.

• 8 The Project SUR.VI.V.E., conducted under the supervision of Corinna Rossi (DABC-Politecn (...)

3The Project SUR.VI.V.E. at the Politecnico di Milano8 was created with the intent of combining the analytical approaches used so far in the study of the terracotta figurines with the innovative digital methodologies, here applied for the first time in a systematic way to the corpus of ancient Egyptian terracotta figurines preserved in the collection of the Museo Egizio in Turin. The goal is to explore the possible applications of 3D models to a specific category of artefacts, Egyptian terracotta figurines, to implement a novel methodology for exploiting the digital to understand their material realm and to serve as a model for future scientific and theoretical developments in coroplastic studies, triggering a renewed academic attention in this field.

• 9 On the techniques applied to the partially molded pottery figure vases of the (...)
• 10 See Barrett, 2011, p. 91 and fn. 277-278, and p. 99, fn. 307, with further references. S (...)

4Egyptian craftsmen used molds to produce terracotta figurines since as early as the New Kingdom.9 However, some technological practices, such as the use of multiple molds to cast hollow clay figurines, were first developed in the Greek world before reaching Egypt.10 Hence, from the Roman period onwards, the manufacturing process of terracotta figurines draws heavily on the advancements of Greek coroplasts, through the adaptation of new manufacturing techniques to the service of religious concepts that often remained largely traditional. There are lots of terracotta statuettes preserved today in museum collections all around the world.

• 11 The lack of texts about the structure of the workshops producing terracotta figurines ma (...)

5In general, the study of terracotta figurines puts the researcher before specific problems that require the adoption of a different perspective and approach compared to other forms of ancient sculptures, along with a full awareness of their intrinsic characteristics, which surpasses geographical and chronological borders. Through their study one can attempt to identify the role of the coroplasts who produced these artefacts, turning the attention not only on their individual role as artisans but also on their integration in a wider social sphere as artists. This means to consider how the manual skills and knowledge were handed down from generation to generation, what was the weight of the social context in which these objects were created and the impact of external influences on the local ones, and how important the preferences of the clients or buyers in the diffusion and trade of mass-produced terracotta figurines were, compared to qualitatively more refined pieces, that can be defined as unique. Therefore, a better understanding of terracotta statuettes can provide insights into aspects of the life and role of the people who produced and used them (the identification of individual terracotta workshops, or even the identity of individual coroplasts), that are little known or that have not yet been investigated in the vast and varied Egyptian context. Indeed, the workshop was an essential part of the social world. It was part of the culture and the world of desires in which the figurines played an essential role, perpetuating customs and cultivating creative thoughts about its material expression.11 The craftsman becomes the interpreter and revitalizer of the tradition. For this reason, we should not underestimate the importance of the design and craftsmanship of the figurines, which mirrors a familiarity with the various ritual gestures and places in which the figurines were produced, used and marketed.

• 12 Ballet, 1997, p. 207-213.

6A terracotta figurine retains social dynamics that contributed to its production. The terracotta modeler, or koroplastes (a term used in ancient Greece to indicate a modeler of images made in clay), worked directly on the plastic medium of the clay, leaving behind revealing indications about the origin of motifs, techniques and dates in the form of seemingly insignificant details. Even those figurines created only by pressing clay into molds involved more attention from the craftsman compared to our modern concepts of “mass-production”. Modelling the clay by hand or filling the mold, adding details with a stick, a knife, or with a paintbrush, tying on cloth or threads, affixing earrings: each act conveys a confidence regarding what will be attractive to the buyer and efficacious in situ. In fact, different methods of shaping and decorating the figurines can be identified. They could be hand-made, modelled by a single or double-molds, completed through the addition of separately-modelled or hand-made elements, and so on.12 In the same way, the surfaces could be treated with varied and multiple decorative techniques, such as engobe, plasters, painted decorations, and incised details. All these shaping processes are related to the efficiency of the production process of the workshop and to the coroplasts’ preferences and priorities, as they naturally chose methods that enabled them to produce the greatest number of figurines in the shortest amount of time. They were rarely interested in creating unique masterpieces, but rather producing from a limited number of molds hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of figurines to satisfy the needs of the popular market. The commercial output of coroplasts was based, then, on the extensive and rapid repetition of a standard repertoire of images, varied sometimes according to whim, that could remain in production for generations. This means that often the statuettes shared the style as well as the flaws resulting from the use of the same mold.

• 13 Ballet and Lyon-Caen, 2012, p. 343-373.

8One of the main obstacles in the study of terracotta figurines (and, in general, of many other artefacts) preserved in museum collections is often the lack of reliable information about the archaeological context and even the find-spot of the majority of them. They usually ended up in current museum collections as the result of the antiquities trade or from expeditions, and most of them were unearthed illegally or during poorly supervised excavations towards the end of the 19^th century. In such cases, the sellers’ not so trustworthy information is all we have regarding the origin of these statuettes. When it comes to objects of ‘unknown provenance’, we cannot rely on any archaeological evidence and dating, therefore piecing together information about these pieces becomes even more complicated. The study of similar figurines coming from controlled excavations in Egypt, where the information obtained from the context allow for different multi-level analyses, can form the basis for a comparative investigation of those from museum collections, thus helping to contextualize them and tease out the production techniques and socio-religious practices of the place where they were produced.13

• 14 The Department of ABC of the Politecnico di Milano has a well-established tradition of a (...)
• 15 Christian Greco, Director of the Museo Egizio, and the staff of over 40 people (...)
• 16 The same digital methodology will be tested on other groups of objects as part (...)

11One of the main objectives of the project SUR.VI.V.E. was to provide a first systematic and in-depth study of a visible collection of terracotta figurines, and also of its invisible counterpart, and to single out criteria that can be replicated in other collections. The project, in its early phase, applied the innovative 3D digital methods of investigation, tested at Politecnico di Milano,14 on 542 terracotta figurines preserved in the collection of the Museo Egizio,15 previously never studied as a whole, in order to increase the amount of information that otherwise would come from only a ceramological and typological analysis.16

• 17 In detail: 138 are from Deir el-Medina, 80 are from Tebtynis, 67 are from Ashmunein, 30 (...)
• 18 For an overview of the iconography of the terracotta figurines produced in Egypt, see (...)
• 19 For an overview of the iconography of animal terracotta statuettes, see Boutantin, 2014.

13The 542 terracotta figurines of the Museo Egizio in Turin were found during the excavations carried out in the early 1900s by Italian scholars and researchers in various Egyptian sites.17 In terms of dating, they cover a period of time ranging from the Old Kingdom to the Byzantine period. Within this span, two substantial clusters stand out: the first one consisting of statuettes dated to the New Kingdom (207 out of 542) and a second one which includes statuettes dated to a more general Greco-Roman period (261 out of 542); the pieces belonging to the other historical periods are fewer. The collection is characterized by a wide range of iconographies that varies from the best known representations of classical and Egyptian deities, female figures symbolizing fertility, standing or seated women with their children, prayers, characters linked to ritual or festive contexts, and animals.18 Among the deities, some representations of Greek gods certainly stand out, in particular those of Aphrodite and Demeter, whose characteristics are often merged with those of figures from the Egyptian pantheon such as Isis, Harpocrates, Bes, Apis, and Sarapis. The corpus also includes a significant number of animal figurines, mostly depicting dogs, horses, hippos, giraffes, monkeys, camelids, cattle and birds.19

• 20 The autoptic analysis of the pieces (ceramological and stylistic study) wa (...)
• 21 The recognition of the material was conducted on existing fractures, speci (...)
• 22 The dimensions given always refer to the maximum measurements of the piece.

14The study of the terracotta figurines preserved in the collection of the Museo Egizio took place during two working visits20 and focused on the entire corpus. During the analysis, each statuette was carefully examined and catalogued according to the stylistic, morphological, physical (material),21 and technological (modelling and surface treatment techniques) characteristics, and compared with the other pieces making up the corpus. The maximum dimensions (height, width and thickness) expressed in centimeters were also noted for each statuette,22 as well as any other connection with fragments belonging to the collection.

• 23 Cat. 7215: 45.6 x 11.5 x 8 cm; Cat. 7218-01: 42.5 x 6 x 12 cm; Cat. 7218-02: 42.4 (...)

15In general, the collection consists mostly of complete or almost complete statuettes; the fragmentary ones are rare. Almost all of the statuettes are in good or fair condition; bad conditions are found only in a few cases. From the analysis of the material (clay) used for the manufacture of the terracotta, it appears that 88.4% were produced from Nile clay fabrics, 4.2% were made from Aswan pink clay fabric and 2.4% were made from calcareous clay fabrics. It should also be noted that 5% of figurines were made of raw clay, or clay whose dough was not fired. As far as modelling methods are concerned, the terracotta figurines present in the collection are mainly molded (64.8%), that is, produced by using single or double molds; the remaining 35.2% are modelled by hand. In the case of a single mold, the figurine is often full and with a smooth back; on the other hand, double-molded terracottas are more frequently hollow, with an open base and a suspension hole (generally with a diameter between 1 and 2.5 cm) in the center of the rear valve. In particular, in the case of figurines produced using double molds, although both the front and the back side come from molds, the back side is usually less detailed, not molded and even not decorated, sometimes only retouched with engravings, and not painted, showing little effort to reproduce the contours of the figure depicted on the back side of the figurine. Some categories of figurines are exceptions, such as the Isis-Aphrodite. In fact, even though these figurines do not show any trace of paint on the back, they are carefully modelled and refined (fig. 1).23 About 200 statuettes, dating mainly to the Greco-Roman period, were selected from the entire corpus to be 3D scanned, based on their iconographic, stylistic and technical characteristics.

• 24 Suppl. 18557: Elephant and rider (from Tebtynis). Aswan clay fabric. 18 x (...)

22The last two steps regard the generation of the 3D mesh (and its optimisations) and the texturing of the model. When the mesh is produced, the operator optimises and corrects any possible flaw using a list of filters. The aim is to reach a smooth, regular, and watertight mesh before the texturing stage. Finally, the texture is recreated reprojecting the images, captured by the cameras, onto the mesh (figs. 5.a-c).24 The result is then exported in .obj format that contains the 3D geometry, namely the position of each vertex, the UV position of each texture coordinate vertex, vertex normal, and the faces that make each polygon defined as a list of vertices, and texture vertices (fig. 6).