CONSERVINGTHE COLLECTION

.With the acquisition of the collection came the responsibility to conserve the objects properly, and this amounted to a nearly $2-million undertaking. After being subjected to the extremes of Canada's climate for more than a century, many of the coffins and mummies had suffered considerable damage. Everything had to be carefully cleaned to remove the century-old layers of caked-on dirt and grime without harming the painted surfaces.

In the case of Iawttayesheret, a lady-in-waiting to the Nubian princesses who resided in Thebes during the 25th Dynasty, it was also necessary to undo a badly botched nineteenth-century restoration of the eyes. Her image on both inner and outer coffins had originally been fitted with eyes made from either alabaster or limestone with glass or painted pupils. The eyebrows and lids were cast from bronze. The original eyes had been removed-probably stolen in antiquity - leaving bare wood eye sockets. In the late nineteenth century, the eyes were poorly and inaccurately restored with plaster. These restorations appeared much larger than the original eyes would have been, and their layer of varnish had yellowed significantly with the passing years. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century eyes were easily removed. Conservators fashioned new ones that more closely resembled those that had been created for these coffins in antiquity based on surviving ancient examples, using stable twentieth-century restoration materials to avoid any confusion for future scholars and conservators.