New Getty Animation Brings Mummies to Life

A new state-of-the-art animation entitled The Mummification Process features a digital reconstruction of a 20-year-old man from the Greco-Roman period of Egypt. The animation, produced by the J. Paul Getty Museum, illustrates each step in the process from the removal of the organs (displayed as virtually disappearing without the hook through the nose procedure that some squeamish visitors may find upsetting) to the application of the distinctive red pigment to the cartonnage outer wrapping.

 

The mummy used in the animation is named Herakleides.  He lived during the Greco-Roman period from 100-150 CE, when he enjoyed an elevated social status.  His high quality mummy portrait shows him wearing a gilded wreath and the cartonnage that encases his mummy is painted with an expensive red paint made from the lead byproduct of silver extraction along the Rio Ocho in the Roman province of Hispania (Spain). 

X-ray fluorescence technology known as XRF was used to pinpoint the origin of the red pigment. During the XRF process, the atoms of material samples are bombarded with short wavelength X-rays, causing the atoms to release radiation with an unique energy signature. 

There are less than 30 Roman-period mummies known to be existing at this time that have red pigment applied to their outer wrappings.  The males were completely painted with the expensive imported pigment while females had only touches of red applied to multicolored cartonnage casings.  Another red shroud mummy, Demetrios, now resides at the Brooklyn Museum.  Herakleides and Demetrios were both CT scanned and the results compared to gain further insight into upper class mummification during the Roman period.

Heartless Mummies

The animation also points out that Herakleides' mummy did not have a heart.  The same was true for Demetrios.  In earlier period mummies, the heart was left in place.

"The heart knows what a person thinks and feels," points out Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian, classical and ancient Middle Eastern art at the Brooklyn Museum. "It is supposed to be left in place during mummification so that it could be weighed against the feather of truth in the final judgment."  Ancient historian Herodotus explained that preserving the heart within the body was a feature of the most expensive of the three mummification processes available in ancient times.

However, during the Greco-Roman period the heart was typically removed with most of the other organs, especially in ethnically non-Egyptian burials.

"Most of the mummies you get in the end [Greco-Roman Period] are not even Egyptians, like our Demetrios. Those who are mummified are the wealthier people and they do participate in Egyptian culture to a certain extent. They were more concerned with their portrait than with mummification. Our two Roman Period mummies have no hearts, in spite of one having a fine mummy portrait, which was apparently an expensive thing to have,"  Beliberg observes in Archaeology Magazine.

The animation also depicts the placement of a mummy of an ibis that was carefully wrapped then inserted in Herakleides' abdomen.  Votive animal mummies proliferated during the Greco-Roman period as funerary gifts to the gods.  The ibis, sacred to Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, would be an appropriate offering for a young ephoebe like Herakleides (denoted by his nude portraiture).

"Ibis mummies and mummies of birds of prey were often mummified using the same technique. The birds were grasped by the feet and plunged into a vat of liquid resin, before being wrapped elaborately in bandages.  Lengths of palm-rib were often used to make the mummies rigid, as was done with some human mummies of the period. A few ibis mummies were eviscerated, but this does not seem to be the rule." - Animal Mummy Project 2000.

No such votive packet was found within the older man, Demetrios, however.

Although the heart had been removed from each mummy, one organ was left inside, although it was different for each man.  In the younger man, Herakleides, his lungs were left within his chest cavity.  In the older man, Demetrios, his gall bladder was found within his abdomen.  Demetrios' gall bladder was found to be impacted with gall stones - his probable cause of death.  Although there is no indication of disease in the lung tissue of Herakleides, perhaps he died of

respiratory failure of some type.  The Greco-Romans may have thought a diseased organ could be restored during the resurrection process if left within the corpse.

Collaboration between institutions is continuing in the study of mummies.  In 2006, the Getty Museum gathered together curators from museums housing red shroud mummies to share their findings and develop plans to scan them.  Museums are also collaborating with Bristol University on a project to exam the different types of resin used across the centuries in the mummification process.  Researchers there have tested mummy resin samples from all over the world and found they were derived from tree sap despite being referred to since 1880 as bitumen, a black tar-like byproduct of coal.

"It's only by building up a number of cases that you can begin to build up generalizations that actually mean something," Bleiberg exclaims.

Read or leave comments