A complete handprint has been discovered on the base of a clay funerary model house in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It was left by the potter who crafted the miniature clay building between 3,400 and 4,000 years ago, likely by accident when the artifact was moved from the workshop to a dry out before being fired in the kiln. Ancient fingerprints and paw prints left in clay are not uncommon, but a complete handprint is exceedingly rare, and this is the first one found on an Egyptian artifact.

Known as a “soul house,” the model features two levels with supporting pillars and two curving staircases on the front left leading to the second floor and the roof. Little clay offerings are embedded in the floor of the courtyard of the house, and what looks like an entrance walkway with walled edges is believed to have been used as a spout to pour libations.

It was discovered in a rock-carved tomb at Deir Rifa, a village about 175 miles north of Luxor that was the capital of the 11th Upper Egyptian province during Egypt’s First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 B.C.). William Flinders Petrie unearthed a number of these model dwellings in burials of commoners from this period in his 1907 excavation at Rifa. He is the one who coined the term “soul houses.”

Egyptologists believe the houses may have been used to leave food offerings. They were placed on top of the burial shaft, which suggests they may have been inexpensive representations of chapels built in the tombs of the wealthy. They could also by symbols of the souls returning to their homes in the afterlife.

Curators found the handprint while examining the soul house before its inclusion in the museum’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition this fall. Fitzwilliam Museum Egyptologists determined that the two-story structure was built on a framework of wooden sticks coated with clay. The steps of the staircase were formed by pinching the wet clay. The wooden framework was incinerated during the firing process, leaving hollow pillars and empty spaces behind.

Unlike many other ancient Egyptian crafts, relatively few details of potters at work survive which makes the discovery of a complete handprint even more important. The ready availability and generally low value of pottery, as well as the fact that potters worked with clay, may have affected their status.

Clay was a commonly found material, either deposited by the Nile as silt, or as shale – a stone that occurred under or between the layers of limestone rock in the desert. The shale would be processed to make a clay known as marl by soaking it in water before kneading by hand or underfoot.

The lives and histories of Egyptian rulers have received a great deal of attention but the makers of the artefacts themselves are often overlooked. Made in Ancient Egypt will show who those people were, how they thought of themselves and what other Egyptians thought of them.