ENNA, SICILY—Francesco Tiradritti of Kore University of Enna and director of the Italian archaeological mission to Egypt thinks that the Meidum Geese, a painting supposedly found in a tomb near the Meidum Pyramid in 1871 by Luigi Vassalli, may be a forgery. Vassalli is credited with removing the painting, now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and putting it in the Museum Bulaq, where he was a curator. The painting depicts three kinds of geese: white-fronted geese, bean geese, and red-breasted geese. Tiradritti told Live Science that when he realized that the bean goose and the red-breasted goose were unlikely to have been seen in Egypt, he took a more critical look at the painting, considered by many to be a masterpiece of Egyptian art. He found that some of the colors in the painting are unique, and the way that the geese are drawn, so that they appear to be the same size, is also unusual. The ancient Egyptians drew animals and people in different sizes, sometimes in order to convey their importance. Tiradritti adds that the cracks in the painting “are not compatible with the supposed ripping of the painting from the wall.” He thinks the geese were painted by Vassalli, who was a trained artist. “The only thing that, in my opinion, still remains to ascertain is what was (or ‘is’) painted under them. But that can be only established through a noninvasive analysis,” he said. To read about Egyptian animal mummies, see "Messengers to the Gods."
