Mummy's husband found - after 3,000 years
Djedmaatesankh lived a challenging life.
Today, her closed coffin, with mummified remains inside, is a key artefact at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto Canada.
She died ca. 850 BC. She lived in a time called the "Third Intermediate Period." The Egyptian state had collapsed by the period and the country had fragmented into local power groups.
She was a musician in the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak and her husband was a door-keeper at the same temple. Judging from her coffin (seen here on the right) she appears to have lived, what we might call, a middle class lifestyle.
Still, her life wasn’t easy - evidence from CT scans show that, when she was in her early to mid thirties, she died from a dental cyst in her upper left jaw. It burst open and poisoned her.
Dental scientist Tony Melcher said in a ROM article that there is also evidence of 13 dental abscesses and extensive dental disease. "I became more and more horrified, the more closely I looked," says Melcher.
It also appears that Djedmaatesankh might well have been infertile -the CT scan shows that her public bone is unbroken, which means that she did not give birth. This is unusual for a married woman, living in her time.
She was interred in a beautiful mummy case of moulded linen and plaster. It was painted and has gold leaf. The mummy case is one of the most well-known artefacts at the Royal Ontario Museum. It was found in the Deir al Bahri area and acquired by ROM curator Charles Currelly in the early 20th century.
And now – 3,000 years after her death – Djedmaatesankh is set for some good news.
The mummy's husband?
This upcoming weekend scientists will announce, at a symposium in Toronto, that they have located her husband, a man known (from Djedmaatesankh's coffin) as Paankhntof.
They say that he is located, in his own coffin, in the Art Institute of Chicago. (A picture of him is on the left)
This mummy is named Paankhenamun - a similar name to Paankhntof. An abstract of their paper, sent to Heritage Key, reads
“The mummies and cartonnage coffins of Djedmaatesankh in the ROM and Paankhenamun in the Art Intitute of Chicago share many details of design, structure and technique. This joint paper will argue from these similarities and the evidence of names, that the two were not merely contemporaries, but were very likely husband and wife.”
The paper is being presented by Gayle Gibson of the Royal Ontario Museum and Stephanie Holowka of the Hospital for Sick Children.
If this evidence holds up, it begs two obvious questions-
-What did Paankhenamun do after his wife died?
-If we know that they are husband and wife – should they now be re-united - And, if so, in which city, Chicago or Toronto?
Heritage Key will be at the presentation and will bring you more information from it.
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Thanks for this interesting post. What fun, to put them together again. I look forward to your update after this weekend's lecture. Perhaps you can also publish a better photo of Paankhenamun-- this one has too much reflection and glare -- in which case I'll do a post too (with full credit given, of course).
Judith
Visit Zenobia's blog at Empress of the East
Thanks Judith. I have contacted the Art Insitute about letting HK publish one of their photos of the mummy. Hope to have a decision before the announcment.
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