The Palimpsest Is Real. The Register's Middle Volume Is Missing.
Reflectance imaging at eleven angles confirms one royal titulary cut over another; both readings are published here. Nobody can date the plaster loss that made the famous shape any closer than a forty-five-year window, and no living conservator remembers it.
ABYDOS, Egypt — Eleven raking angles. Two royal names. Both of them legible in the same square metre of ceiling.
That is the result of the imaging this newspaper commissioned on the architrave in the first hall of the temple at Abydos, and it confirms what conservators there have said in print since 1996.
The older signs are the titulary of Seti I. Cut over them, for his successor, is the titulary of Ramesses II. The old signs were filled with plaster and the plaster is gone in patches. Where it is gone, both sets read at once, and from the angle at which the photographs are taken from the floor the overlap makes the shape that has been reproduced several million times.
Both readings are published with this item, with the raw captures, so that anybody may check them.
The question we could not answer
Everything above can be dated to within a reign. The interesting question is when the plaster came off, and that turns out to be a filing question rather than an archaeological one.
The conservation register for 1931 to 1953 has an entry for architrave 3 in bay 14. It reads, in full: plaster sound, no loss. Two conservators signed it.
The register for 1990 to 2009 has an entry for the same architrave. It reads: plaster loss, extent approx. 0.4 sq m, old.
The word carrying the weight in that sentence is old. Whoever wrote it in 1998 was recording damage they took to be long-standing and did not think worth dating.
Volume two
The volume that covers 1954 to 1989 is not in the archive.
Its loan card is blank. The store has been searched twice at our request, including two crates that came back from a move between buildings in 1972 and have never been fully unpacked. One of the two conservators who signed the 1998 entry is dead. The other, Nagwa Selim-Kroon, told us by telephone that the volume was already not on the shelf when she began work in 1994, and that she does not remember the loss being new.
The earliest tourist photograph we have been able to date independently is from 2003, and the loss is already at its present extent. Nine later frames agree with it. Before 2003 we have nothing we can put a year to.
So the plaster fell between 1953 and 1998, in a forty-five-year window with thirty-six years of it undocumented, and no living person we could find remembers it happening.
What this rules out
Three things, and they are worth stating separately.
It is not ancient. Nothing was carved to produce the shape; the shape is an absence of plaster over two ordinary inscriptions, and the scan shows the tool marks belong entirely to the two carving campaigns.
It is not a modern intervention. There are no fresh tool marks anywhere in the eleven captures, and the fracture surfaces are consistent with lime plaster failing off a limestone substrate rather than being cut or picked.
And it is not evidence of anything. It is an undated maintenance failure in a building that has had, for most of the period in question, one conservator and no budget — with a ledger volume missing from the middle of it, along with forty other volumes nobody has ever asked about.
We can date the carving to within a reign. We cannot date the plaster to within forty years. Those two sentences are the whole of what this newspaper established, and the second one cost more than the first.
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Sources & Method
We stopped arguing about photographs and paid for a measurement: reflectance transformation imaging at eleven raking angles, captured under permit and published in full. Then we tried to date the plaster loss from the conservation registers, spent two days in the archive, and failed, which is the second half of this item.
Who we spoke to
- Dr. Yusra Lindqvist-Okoye, Imaging specialist; carried out the capture under permit. Commissioned by this newspaper at commercial rate; on site with our correspondent for two days 14–15 July 2026 The raw captures and the fitted normal map are published with this item and may be reused by anyone.
- Dr. Kholoud Vansittart-Amin, Epigrapher; read the scan without being told what it was of. Sent the processed surface only, with no site name, and asked what it said July 2026 Returned both titularies in ninety minutes and asked why we were being coy.
- Conservation registers, volumes one and three, 1931–1953 and 1990–2009. Read in the archive over two days, by appointment; the two entries photographed with permission July 2026
- Nagwa Selim-Kroon, Conservator; one of the two signatories on the 1998 entry, retired 2011. Interviewed by telephone, twice July and August 2026 Says the volume was already not on the shelf when she started in 1994.
- Hisham Verhoeven-Attia, Keeper of the conservation archive. Written questions three times; answered at length on the third August 2026 His reply is printed entire and says we have written a story about his shelves.
What we could not confirm
- In what decade the plaster fell. The register volume that would say covers 1954 to 1989 and is not in the archive; neither signatory to the 1998 entry can remember the loss being new.
- Whether volume two was ever shelved after 1990 at all. Its loan card is blank, which can mean nobody borrowed it or that nobody ever carded it, and the keeper says both happen.
- Whether the loss was one event or several. One fracture edge in the scan looks fresh and another is weathered smooth; our epigrapher would not choose between a single fall and forty years of slow shedding, and neither will we.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphSCIENCE CONFIRMS THE ABYDOS CARVING IS NO ACCIDENT
Reported our commissioned scan as vindication, having seen the file and not the finding.
Had that we did not
The scan, credited, and a good reproduction of angle seven.
Left out
That the scan resolves the sign group into two ordinary royal names, which is the opposite of what the headline says.
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The Continental WireImaging Study Finds Overlapping Inscriptions On Abydos Ceiling Block
Ran the finding as a two-paragraph item off our own publication note.
Had that we did not
The method, the eleven angles, and the two readings, correctly.
Left out
The registers. A reader of the wire item does not learn that nobody can say what decade the plaster fell off in.
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They Buriedthis newspaperThe Palimpsest Is Real. The Register's Middle Volume Is Missing.
Paid for imaging rather than argue about photographs, then went to the archive to date the damage and could not.
Had that we did not
Both titularies, the 1953 and 1998 entries verbatim, and the keeper's reply saying we asked the wrong question.
Left out
We spent £4,900 confirming what conservators have said in print since 1996, then built the item on a ledger gap we could not close. The headline promises a finding and the second sentence takes it away. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Hisham Verhoeven-Attia, keeper of the conservation archive in writing on 27 July, 3 August and 11 August 2026. Answered on 13 August 2026. Printed entire and unedited.
You have written to me three times and each time the question has been the same: where is volume two. I will answer it properly, and then I will say why it is a smaller question than your newspaper appears to think.
Volume two is not on the shelf. It has not been on the shelf in my time, which begins in 2002, and Mrs Selim-Kroon has told you it was not there in 1994. Its loan card is blank. I have had the store searched twice for you, including the two crates that came back from the 1972 move between buildings and have never been fully unpacked, and it is not in them.
Now the part you did not ask. Forty-one bound volumes across nine series in this archive are unaccounted for. Some were lost in the 1972 move. Some were in the basement store in 1994 when it flooded and were pulped by a contractor who was paid to dry them and did not. Some, I assume, were simply carried off by scholars who meant to return them, because that is what happens to a volume that is useful.
In twenty-four years, no one has ever written to me about the other forty. They write about this one, because a shape on a ceiling is famous and a drainage register is not. I understand that. But you should understand what it means: you have not found a gap, you have found the one gap anybody looks at.
I will say the rest plainly, since you have printed my words unedited before. You commissioned an excellent piece of imaging. It confirms what conservators here have said in print since 1996 and what any epigrapher will tell you in an afternoon. Then you came to my reading room and wrote a story about my shelves, because the imaging did not give you the thing you needed, which was a mystery.
The plaster fell off a ceiling. Plaster does. It fell off between 1953 and 1998 and I cannot be more precise than that, and neither can you, and neither can anybody now living. That is not a suppression. It is a maintenance failure in a building that is three thousand three hundred years old and has had, for most of the period in question, one conservator and no budget.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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