The future of the Norwich shroud

British Museum (Faye Kalloniatis)

Well, this will be the final blog entry for the Norwich shroud and what a way we’ve come over the past few months

As the project got underway, one highlight followed another. The first was the initial unrolling, when we watched the small and crumpled scrap unfurl to become a good-sized fragment of shroud. Then we saw that it had not merely a few columns of text but, rather, was filled with it – an epigrapher’s dream.

Then came the cartouche of Menkaure, which sent us all into paroxysms of delight. No sooner had we come to terms with this when we discovered the name of the shroud’s owner – a certain Ipu, daughter of Mutresti.

Yet there was more to come.