The mummy was a socially valued woman named Meruah, according to the casket inscription dating from about 1000 BC. A separate group of researchers discovered the age of the coffin in 1988.
The new technology has enabled the researchers to perform virtual dissections and thus the layers of the roof to better characterize the body in 2017. The University of Sydney is preparing to open its Chau Chak Wing Museum, “which has a dedicated space for the ancient Egyptian material of the Nicholson Collection,” said Sowada, a research fellow in the Department of History and Archeology. at Macquarie University’s main campus in Sydney. , via e-mail.
The layers of the shell are made of minerals, which differ from the expensive resin used for mummified elite individuals. “This is the first time a dyed mud treatment has been discovered,” Sowada added.
“Many coffins were robbed of their original inhabitants in ancient times. In the local antiquities trade of the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were probably many coffins for sale empty,” Sowada said by email. ‘Traders found complete mummified corpses found in desert cemeteries, and placed them in coffins to sell complete’ sets’ to tourists, although corpses and coffins may not belong together.
“It was fashionable for foreign tourists to return home with an Egyptian mummy.”
The body’s internal reproductive organs were removed during the mummification process, and genitals were not seen on the scans, so more detailed analyzes of DNA samples are needed, Sowada said. “However, this will require further penetrating engagement through destructive testing, and it needs to be carefully considered on a number of levels.”
Shifting the provisions on gender of a mummy “happens all the time”, said Peter Lacovara, director of The Ancient Egyptian Archeology and Heritage Fund and advisory curator for the Egyptian collection at the Albany Institute of History and Art in the state New York, said. “At the Albany Institute, we had a mummy that was previously identified as a female, and we took it to be tested and it turned out to be a male.”
“It’s sometimes harder to tell with old bodies; there seems to be less distinction, or we pick it up less clearly.”
The DNA collected at the time may have been contaminated, the authors said.
The body also experienced damage shortly after the initial mummification, including the separation and displacement of the skull, jaw, and parts of the spine. Some bones were far away from their rightful place – the left kneecap was at the level of the left ankle, and the right kneecap was below the top of the left femur. Some bones were broken.
“Mummification dries and stabilizes the body tissues, so we would expect there to be very few (if any!) Movements to or deposition of the bones or disarticulation,” Sowada said in an email.
“The CT scans of this person’s body show us that they were subject to severe disruption – but also that it is very important that they be repaired after being disturbed.”
The body was then subjected to the wrapping, packaging and filling of material and the application of the mud shell. The mud cap probably served a threefold purpose, the study said. It was a form of preservation for a body that had suffered significant damage for one, and which possibly also served a symbolic purpose.
The study said that the scapegoat aided the metaphysical transition of the deceased to the afterlife and the sphere of the god Osiris. “The mythological experiences of this god of the underworld – his death, disintegration, relocation and rebirth – were long established to serve as a precedent for the mortuary experience of all Egyptians. … Like the god, the deceased could also hope on survival in the hereafter, when properly prepared. ‘
“Mud was associated with the idea of rebirth and growth,” Sowada said, “so it would have been a symbolically important material to use.”
Finally, because the minerals contained in the mud shell were cheaper options than the resin used for elite-mummified individuals, they might have enabled the repair workers to show status by following the mummification practices for elite humans.
The red pigment used for the part of the shell that covers the face was a bit unusual for women who were mummified during that period.
‘This practice is related to the belief that women adopted a temporary, crucial, post-mortem male aspect in death, so that they could be reconsidered by their own images and reborn in the hereafter (in the same way as believed is that male grave owners would undergo it (process through representations of their female relatives or goddesses), ”Heather McCarthy, an Egyptologist and deputy director of the New York University Epigraphical Expedition to the Ramesses II Temple in Abydos, emailed said. “The use of masculine, red and reddish-brown skin tones is a sign of the sexual fluid condition.”
The findings help shape a larger and more nuanced picture of how the ancient Egyptians treated and prepared their dead, Sowada said.
“It is likely that prior studies on mummified bodies in other collections, where a ‘resin’ cap has been identified, need to be re-examined for the possibility that the carapace was rather made of mud,” she added. “The application of scientific techniques to museum collections reveals the wealth of new information that is sitting right under our noses.”