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Mummies and Mummification
Abstract
This article discusses mummies and mummification in Roman Egypt. The question of whether mummies from Roman Egypt attest a decline or a late heyday of mummification techniques can be answered firmly in favour of the latter. The different but generally high standards of embalming, using traditional as well as innovative Egyptian craftsmanship including excerebration, evisceration, and large quantities of embalming resins and linen, were dependent on two factors: cost and local practices. The use of extensive linen wrappings, mummy decoration (masks, shrouds, portraits, etc.), amulets, jewellery, and other burial goods, and the gilding of the skin, often correspond to high-quality mummification. However, the extremely high expense of a first-class burial in Roman Egypt was beyond almost everyone's reach.
Radiological examination of an ancient mummy said to have been found in royal tombs in Thebes, Upper Egypt, has proved it is the body of a pregnant woman. She came from the elite of Theban community and was carefully mummified, wrapped in fabrics, and equipped with a rich set of amulets. Closer examination has revealed that the woman died between 20 and 30 years of age together with the fetus in age between the 26th and 30th week of the pregnancy. This find is the only known case of an embalmed pregnant individual.
This mummy provides new possibilities for pregnancy studies in ancient times, which can be compared with and related to current cases. Furthermore, this specimen sheds a light on an unresearched aspect of ancient Egyptian burial customs and interpretations of pregnancy in the context of ancient Egyptian religion.
Grounded in new research from recent analyses of the mummified individuals curated at the British Museum, this chapter provides an overview of the evolution of mummification in the Nile valley. Featuring Ameniryirt, a Twenty-Sixth Dynasty Theban official who lived around 600 BC, it outlines the varying methods employed to preserve human remains in ancient Egypt, as well as the modern approaches used in their analysis. From the natural mummies of the Predynastic Period to those of medieval Nubia, advances in CT-scanning and three-dimensional visualization technology have allowed us to investigate their mummified remains without the need to unwrap them. Many are remarkably preserved and were embalmed with great care and expertise to ensure their survival in the afterlife. A range of approaches – spanning several thousand years – were successfully used to preserve their bodies, with organs treated in numerous ways and great variety in the use of unguents, packing, and wrappings. Bioarchaeological methods are employed to determine their approximate age-at-death, confirm their sex, and provide new insights into their lives and state of health. Applying new analytical techniques to long-held collections continues to advance our understanding of ancient beliefs and practices, as well as provide a unique understanding of the lives of individuals from the distant past.
Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives uses the latest CT scanning technology to take you beneath the mummy wrappings and discover six unique individuals.
Ancient mummies have been a source of public fascination and a focus for scientific enquiry for over 200 years. Early investigation of the bodies involved their unwrapping, but modern imaging techniques now enabled curators and researchers to virtually explore their mummified remains without damaging or disturbing them.
Six mummies curated at the British Museum, including a temple singer, a child from the Roman era and a priest, are the focus of this book. They lived and died in Egypt between 1800 and 3000 years ago. Their 3D CT scan visualisations provide a unique insight into ancient Egyptian mummification and the lives of these individuals.
How old were they? Did they suffer from poor health during their life? What is the significance of the paintings that adorn a coffin? How were bodies mummified to grant the deceased eternal life in the netherworld? Using cutting-edge science and technology, these and other questions are answered in this book, lavishly illustrated throughout with remarkable CT scan imagery. Layers are virtually removed and the bandages, skin, muscles and skeletons, as well as any objects placed beneath the wrappings, are revealed. Some of the health problems that the individual must have suffered from during life are discussed alongside their age at death, the mummification process behind their preservation, their beliefs and, on occasion, anomalies in the embalming process.
Pictorial art during the Roman period is a field that has been amply studied, and is generally divided according to the material employed. This article shows that paintings on linen are a form of artistic expression that is well documented in antiquity, and that they represent a primary source for the study of the work done by painters who specialized in funerary art.
The best preserved and largest surviving ancient collection of paintings on cloth comes from Egypt. It is a practice that is closely tied to funerary customs, as is documented from prehistoric times, and that reached its maximum extension during the Roman period.
In recent years, British Museum curators have collaborated with scientists and medical experts to explore non-invasive imaging techniques and other scientific approaches to further study Egyptian mummies. Piecing together key biographical data and information, it has been possible for the first time to discover more about who these people were in ancient Egyptian society. Mummies draws on cutting-edge research to reveal the actual experience of living and dying in the ancient Nile Valley. Eight significant mummies are explored, each carefully selected to tell a different story, covering a period of over 4000 years. They include a young female temple singer, an unknown man of high status, and a child from the Roman era. Funerary objects are also highlighted for context: for example, non-invasive imaging of the contents of canopic jars; analyses of embalming substances, and identification of wood species and pigment types used in coffins. The majority of the material is drawn from the British Museum’s extensive Egypt and Sudan collections, but the book includes a number of mummies from other museums to physically reunite individuals originally buried together in family or communal tombs. This allows fascinating comparisons to be made.
Although embalming is traditionally considered an Egyptian custom, ancient sources suggest that in imperial Rome the practice was not employed by Egyptians or Egyptianized Romans alone. The mos Romanorum in funerary ritual encompassed both cremation and inhumation, yet embalming appears in Rome as early as the first century AD and evidence points to its limited use during the first three centuries AD. Within the social structure of Rome's dead these preserved corpses certainly occupied a distinct place. Yet who were they and why were they embalmed? It is argued here that various factors allowed for the occasional use of embalming by Romans: (1) an apparent shift in attitudes towards Egypt, (2) the manipulation of death ritual for social distinction, and (3) the flexibility of the traditional Roman funeral, which was able to incorporate deviations in methods of body disposal. Although embalming has been largely ignored as a significant aspect of Roman funerary history, its patrons come from the classes of highest status, including even the imperial household. This fact alone makes it worthwhile to examine this small corpus of evidence. For example, the emperor Nero embalmed his wife Poppaea; such a deviation from standard disposal methods reflects imperial fashion, but also requires us to re-evaluate Nero's reign and, especially, the societal constructs of Neronian Rome. This study attempts to contextualize embalming within Roman society and offer some likely causes and effects of its use.
Ever since the O. K., the religious justification for the mummification of the dead, had been the belief that the dead could live again if they became Osiris through mummification and the accompanying rites. This remained true in Roman times. But in the Roman period the mummy was no longer represented as the god Osiris with a non-individual mask on its face, but as the god adorned with an individual portrait of the dead. To account for this change archaeologists have suggested that the mummies stayed in the houses of the living for quite some time. Greek and Roman authors seemed to testify to this custom. The article shows that the non-Egyptian authors looked at the phenomenon from a different point of view and therefore must have misunderstood some of the burial customs. The explanation for the change in the understanding of becoming Osiris is not to be sought in the close connecetion between the living and the dead in the houses of the living, but in the changed relationship between god and men, as it was understood by Greeks and Romans in a different way from the Egyptians.
Dans necropole W secteur chretien. Les tombes sont individuelles dans leur tres grande majorite 150 pour 4 collectives. Certains corps traites pour etre momifies, d’autres non (croyance ?). Tous les hommes sont barbus. Peu de mobilier mais beaucoup de tombes pillees. Tres nombreuses momies de chiens (90 entieres) ex votos du sanctuaire mis au rebut dans des tombes
In the 1990s, new scholarship, archaeological discoveries, and high-profile museum exhibitions marked a revived interest in the funerary art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Much of this art is characterized by the use of naturalistic portraiture, especially in the form of "mummy portraits" painted on wooden panels, and these two-dimensional portrait representations have received the bulk of scholarly attention. This article examines recent research on the subject and broadens the field of inquiry by addressing other forms of funerary art in use during the periods in question. It explores two particular issues, namely the mechanics of portraiture and the contested chronology of the corpus, and suggests further points for discussion so that the value of art historical evidence can be better realized in considerations of self-presentation and cultural identity.
A total of 49 Late Ptolemaic-Roman Period mummies excavated from Kellis-1 cemetery at Ismant el-Kharab in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis were examined by gross dissection in 1993 and 1998. Of these, 35 were sufficiently intact to reconstruct their mummification methodology. M ost of these bodies h ad b een looted a t le ast o nce in antiquity with consequent damag e to their integrity. The bodies of three bundles were found to be completely skeletonized. In the remaining 32, twenty had become mummified spontaneously secondary to environmental conditions. In these, some desiccated viscera were found within the body cavities. The re maining 12 ha d been mummified anthropogenically. These had been eviscerated, usually via an abdominal incision, and resin had been applied liberally, both internally and externally to these bodies. No evidence of natron desiccation was evident in either group. In many of each group, ancient efforts to reconstruct looted, fragmented bodies were encountered, both with and without the use of resin. Some reconstructions included resin introduction into the body cavities of spontaneously mummified bodies via atypical ports, while others involved the employment of body parts from more than one mummy. As a result, a total of seven distinct patterns of mummification were encountered among these 35 bodies. Familiarity with visceral alteration patterns that occur in spontaneously mummified bodies was key to unraveling the sometimes bizarre procedures inflicted on some of these bodies during postburial looting and mummy reconstruction efforts. The anthropogenic mummification methods were similar to those of contemporary burials in the Nile valley and at the Kharga Oasis.
An ancient Egyptian mummy from the collections of the National Museums of Scotland was examined using computerised tomography (CT) scanning as part of the NMS mummy project. A facial reconstruction was produced from the CT scans for comparison with a painted 'portrait' which covers the face of the wrappings. The scans indicated the mummified wrapped body of an adult male 1.65 m tall with excellent preservation of the body. An exact replica, translucent model of the skull was created from the CT scans and standard cephalometric analysis undertaken. The facial features were reconstructed onto a plaster model of the skull from known tissue depths using terracotta clay. The resultant face was compared with the portrait and an extremely close match obtained, suggesting this was an individual portrait painted around the time of death.