If these walls could talk. Exploring the potential of multivariate statistics to investigate Egyptian Old Kingdom elite tomb iconography

That iconography in Old Kingdom elite tombs can convey information about dating and/or provenance of a tomb or tomb fragment has long been postulated in Egyptology. The usability of iconography in determining reliable dating or provenance information is limited by several persistent roadblocks; remains are fragmentary, the data sets small, and there is always a need for secure anchor points. This paper proposes a novel approach to address these issues, using the iconography of Memphite Old Kingdom elite tombs as a case study for multivariate statistical analysis. This type of analysis considers iconography as discrete datapoints and remains largely underexplored in Egyptology. An innovative method for extracting and analysing iconographic information is developed in an effort to understand the relationships between various iconographic features in Old Kingdom elite tombs and to investigate whether these features have the potential to act as dating and/or provenance predictors. This paper lays the groundwork for understanding how to deal with this kind of information and paves the way for further exploration of how multivariate statistical solutions can be applied.