3D scanning and shape analysis help archaeologists connect objects across space and time to recover their lost histories

Today the world of Egyptology faces a silent crisis—not of looting, although that plays a part, but of disconnection. Walk into any major museum, from Copenhagen to California, and you see glass cases filled with what could be called orphaned artifacts: remarkable objects, often acquired in the 19th and early 20th century, that have been completely stripped of their histories. You can see what they are—a mummy's painted foot case, a golden mask—but we have no idea where they came from. They are beautiful, but historically they are mute.