The artists and sculptors of Ancient Egypt may not be names we all know, but the new study of a female pharaoh's temple shows that they, too, have a lot in common with their Renaissance counterparts. Rather than being artists working alone, the sculptors worked in teams with chisel-wielding novices and skilled craftsmen who led a large team of other assistants.

Archaeologist Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczynska of the University of Warsaw and her colleagues studied the temple of Hatshepsut, one of Egypt's few female pharaohs, who ruled from 1478 BC to 1458 BC to better understand the work done to decorate ancient temples. The Temple of Hatshepsut, with a width of 105 meters and a height of 273 meters, was built about 3,500 years ago in Deir el-Bahari, that is, in present-day Luxor.

In a 70-square-metre room at the back of the temple, called the “Hatshepsut Chapel,” two 13-metre-tall walls are carved with seemingly endless processions of men carrying offerings—wheat sheaves, bird baskets, and many other attractions—to the seated Hatshepsut. . 200 figures occupy two-thirds of the room's wall space.

Stupko-Lubczynska was there as part of the Polish-Egyptian expedition that the University of Warsaw is currently conducting to clean and restore the damaged walls of the temple. Between 2006 and 2013, Stupko-Lubczynska and the draftsmen spent hundreds of hours manually documenting the chapel's walls, copying the carvings in exact size onto sheets of plastic film before the conservators cleaned the figures. “We had to go over their lines and copy the steps they took, repeating the process carried out by the engravers,” Stupko-Lubczynska said. says.

In the process, archaeologists identified tiny details such as clumsy chisel strikes and subsequent corrections in the soft limestone of the chapel: “We have so many figures with repetitive details that we can compare details and craftsmanship.” says Stupko-Lubczynska. “When you look at enough figures, you can easily see if that artist is doing his job properly.”

Slowly, Stupko-Lubczynska and her colleagues began to see the subtle differences that seemed like an army of inexperienced icons. Some figures were noticeably worse: legs and torso with fakely chiseled corners, wig waves shaped with too many chisel strokes, although two or three expert strokes would normally suffice.