The importance of tomography studying wooden artefacts: A comparison with radiography in the case of a coffin lid from ancient Egypt

X-ray radiography is nowadays widely employed in the Cultural Heritage field and can give many and useful information on different topics related to artworks and archaeological finds. On the other hand, tomography is less diffused and more time-consuming and expensive, but overcomes the main limitation of radiography, that is the projection of the entire volume on a plane, losing information about the third dimension. This is especially true when radiography is applied to objects with complex geometry or different materials: in these cases, the real distribution of pieces and materials is sometimes impossible to understand and a tomography is necessary. In this paper, we will show the case study of the Taiefmutmut’s coffin lid, a woman from Ancient Egypt, analysed with both radiography and tomography. This case is particularly significant because, even if the object is relatively simple both for geometry and materials, the results obtained with the two techniques are noticeably different. In particular, the tomography gives a larger amount of information, both on the building technique, on the state of conservation and on previous restorations.