Tag: Mummification

King Tut suffered ‘massive’ chest injury, new research reveals

A new study shows that Tutankhamun, Egypts famous boy-king who died around the age of 18, suffered a massive crushing tearing injury to his chest that likely would have killed him.

X-rays and CT scans have previouslyshown that the pharaohs heart, chest wall, the front part of his sternum and adjacent ribs, are missing. In Ancient Egypt the heart was like the brain and removing it was something that was not done.

The heart, considered the seat of reason, emotion, memory and personality, was the only major organ intentionally left in the body, writes Dr. Robert Ritner in the book Ancient Egypt.

The new research was done by Dr. Benson Harer, a medical doctor with an Egyptology background, who was given access to nearly 1700 CT scan images of Tut that were taken by a team of Egyptian scientists in 2005. Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, gave permission for the work.

Zahi was very kind he let me get access to the entire database of all the CT scans, said Dr. Harer.

It has been suggested that tomb robbers, operating sometime between 1925 and 1968, may have stolen the heart and chest bones. The new research shows that while robbers stole some of Tuts jewellery they didnt take the body parts. Instead they were lost due to a massive chest injury Tut sustained while he was still alive.

This isnt the only medical problem Tut had. In 2005 a team of researchers reported that he had a broken leg and earlier this year an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that Tut suffered from malaria, something that may have contributed to his death.

Harers work was published in the journal Bulletin of the Egyptian Museum. It was also presented last spring at a conference organized by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). This Thursday Harer was in Canada, giving his findings at the University of Toronto.

Harer specializes in Obstetrics and Gynecology, but also taught Egyptology as an adjunct professor at California State University at San Bernardino, up until his retirement.

1968 – The first X-rays

To understand what happened to Tuts chest we need to go back to 1968. In that year the first x-rays were done revealing that many of Tuts chest bones were missing. They also showed that jewellery, which had been on King Tut when an autopsy was done in 1925, were also gone. This means that robbers got to him sometime between those years.

Harers research indicates that while Tuts jewellery was certainly stolen, the chest bones were already long gone.

The CT scans show, in high-resolution, the edge of what is left of Tuts rib bones. Dr. Harer said that the ribs are very neatly cut and could not have been chopped off by modern day thieves. The ribs were cut by embalmers and not by robbers.

He added that if you try to cut through a 3,500 year old bone it is brittle, before you can saw up through it the pressure on the bone would crack a vast part and you would have jagged edges of the bone, he said.

These are neatly trimmed and the robbers are not going to take the time to try and do a tidy job.

King Tut's mummy, as photographed by Harry Burton, the photographer that for Howard Carter documented the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. - Image copyright the Griffith Institute More proof that Tut suffered a major chest injury is found in the technique that Tuts embalmers used to take out his intestines, liver and stomach.

In Ancient Egypt those organs were removed after death and put into canopic jars (video: King Tut’s canopic shrine and jars introduced).

Harer said that the embalmers used a transverse incision which was cut into Tut and went from his umbilicus (his navel), towards the spine. They took out the organs below the diaphragm, he said. However they did not go through the diaphragm to extract the lungs – the chest was gaping open, they could just lift them out directly.

Harer says he has never seen another royal mummy cutinto this way. Tut is the only upscale mummy I know that had a transverse incision.

Normally, for religious reasons, there would be a special amulet, an embalming plate, over the incision that the embalmer made.

However, in this case, there is none. Since the body already had a huge opening it would be pointless to suture the abdominal incision and protect, Harer wrote in his journal article.

Also Tut’s arms were crossed at his hips, not at his chest, as would normally be befitting a pharaoh.

Stuffing up Tut

Theres more evidence that Tut’s chest, including the skin, had been gouged away while he was still alive.

When the first autopsy on Tut was done in 1925, it revealed that he had been stuffed like a turkey, filled with what Howard Carter called a mass of linen and resin, now of rock-like hardness.

Harer says that the CT scans show that this material would have been packed from the chest down.

The chest was packed first, and as they did so, they pushed the flaccid diaphragm down they inverted it, said Dr. Harer. However the packing improved the appearance of Tuts chest, the packing restored the normal contour of the chest and then the beaded bib (with Tuts jewellery) was placed on top of it.

When Carter examined the bib he was impressed with how adherent it was. “It was so adherent that he couldnt successfully remove it, said Harer. Carter didn’t hesitate to remove other parts of Tut’s body, he actually hacked off the limbs in order to aid the autopsy.

Harer pointed out that if the bib had been put over Tut’s skin (rather than the packing material) he should have had no trouble with it. If that beaded bib had been placed over skin over the clavicle, the skin would have provided a plane in which the bib could have been easily removed.

Chased by Hippos – Watch towards the end of the video, where you’ll see a hippo ferociously attacking a boat.

What caused this injury?

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury hed go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldnt gouge a chunk out of his chest.

Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility – that Tut was killed by a hippo.

Its not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact in Tuts tomb which appears to show him hunting one of them.

It would also explain why there is no account of Tuts death since being killed by a hippo would be a pretty embarrassing way for a pharaoh to die.

Hippos kill more people than any other animal, they are the most lethal animal in Africa (if not) the world, said Harer. The victim suffers massive tearing injury and can actually be cut in half. Medical reports indicate that even though they are running away from the hippo they typically suffer a frontal wound.

In Tuts case, if the hippo charged, his entourage may not have been able to get to him in time. If he did have a club foot (as a recent medical report suggests) it would make him the slowest person getting out of the way the easiest person for the hippo to get.

Tut may not have even been hunting a hippo. It may have been that he was fowling in the marsh, just got in the wrong area, and the hippo attacked him.

Still, it’s tempting to imagineTut trying to hunt a hippo. Despite his club foot and malaria, it’s enticing to believe that the teenage pharaoh decided to hunt one of the most dangerous animals in the world. If his goal was to increase his fame then he succeeded far beyond expectations, in death becoming the most famous Egyptian ruler who ever lived.

Mummies in Milwaukee! Mummies of the World coming to Wisconsin in December

The mummified head of a middle-aged man who lived in Egypt during the Roman period, still half-covered in bandages. The skull contains desiccated embalming substances, but no soft tissue. Radiocarbon analysis establishes its age as c. 2025 years BC. Picture credit - American Exhibitions, Inc The good citizens of Milwaukee are set for a mummifying experience.

From December 17, 2010 to May 20, 2011 the exhibit Mummies of the World will be hitting the Milwaukee Public Museum. The exhibit features 150 human and animal mummies showcasing mummification practices from around the world.

The ‘Mummies of the World’ touring exhibit is currently on at the California Science Center.

Egypt is famous for its mummies, but the practice is seen in many other cultures. The bogs of Northern Europe allow for mummification, as does the hot arid climate of Peru. Mummification techniques have even been used in modern times Lenin being perhaps the most well-known example.

The exhibition will feature many examples. They include animal mummies from Ancient Egypt, an embalmed 4,500 year old Peruvian baby known as the Detmold Child and the mummy of Baron Von Holtz a 17th century noblemen thought to have died in the thirty years war (1618-1648).

Mummies of the World will give a broad overview of natural (spontaneous, such as the5,300-year-oldItalian Otzi the Iceman) and anthropogenic (artificial, the most famous example being the mummy of Tutankhamun)mummification in all its many forms, and consequently provide viewers with an educational and scientific window into the cultures, history and lives of people who came before us.

If youre looking for something to tide you over, until then,check out Chasing Mummies, a new reality show starring Dr. Zahi Hawass.It features plenty of wacky Egyptology action. Heritage Keys Jon Himoff has been following the venture closely.

The million mummy question: Why are there a million mummies buried near Snefu’s Seila pyramid?

Nearly 4,600 years ago a third dynasty pharaoh named Snefru launched one of the greatest construction projects in human history.

He decided, for reasons that are unknown to us, to build four pyramids scattered at different places across Egypt. He constructed two of them at Dashur (the Red and Bent pyramids), one at Meidum and another at a place called Seila. Together they used up more material than Khufus pyramid at Giza.

Casing stones were used to give them a smooth appearance in other words make them into true pyramids.” This was the first time in Egyptian history that this was done.

Today a team from Brigham Young University, in Utah, is investigating these pyramids, trying to figure out why Snefru would build four of them in the way he did.

One of the puzzles the team is trying to decipher involves a cemetery not far from the Seila Pyramid. Its a 40 minute hike away and research indicates that it has an enormous number of mummies. We estimate over a million bodies in this cemetery, said Professor Kerry Muhlestein in an interview with Heritage Key. Its very very densely populated by mummies.

Only a small percentage of them have been unearthed. Weve been digging there for 30 years and we could dig there for a hundred more and still have only done a small percentage, said Muhlestein.

Results indicate that the cemetery was not in use during Snefrus time. In fact the earliest burials appear to be from the Middle Kingdom at least 600 years after the Seila pyramid was constructed. Furthermore most of the burials are even later than that.

For the most part the cemetery is Graeco-Roman period, from the Ptolemaic era down to the end of the Byzantine era, said Muhlestein. This period started when Alexander the Great entered Egypt in 332 BC.

So the question is why did so many people who lived long after Snefrus reign choose to be buried so close to the Seila Pyramid?

A sacred place

Making this question more enticing is that this wasnt just a local cemetery. People seem to have come some distance to be interned here.

Its such a huge cemetery its hard to account for where all these people would have lived the population centres around there dont seem to substantiate that many burials, said Professor Muhlestein.

Maybe these are people coming from a variety of communities, all around, being buried in this place. Were not sure what would account for such a large number of burials.

Could there be a connection to the pyramid? Despite the fact that it was built thousands of years before most of these people were buried? Muhlestein believes that its a real possibility but one hard to prove unless textual evidence is found. It probably is at least partially responsible for why theres a cemetery there, said Muhlestein.

It seems very reasonable to suppose that the pyramid designated that as a sacred place, he said. Once that place is a sacred place it typically will remain a sacred place.

A family of mummies

In early 2010 the Brigham Young team continued their work. The university has a program that lets students learn field techniques while excavating at the site.

Its an interesting, and indeed fairly rare, opportunity for students. You wont find too many field-schools, who accept undergraduates, operating in Egypt. Muhlestein said that they have had an excellent experience with this program and the most recent dig turned up, what appears to be, a family who lived at some point during the early/mid 1st millennium AD, when Christianity was widespread in Egypt.

They found an adult male and female buried close together with an infant at their feet and a toddler on their chest. We think this might be a family but well have to do some DNA analysis to know for sure, said Muhlestein.

Each of them was buried with their head facing to the east, this is probably indicative of the advent of Christianity, said Muhlestein.

The family does not appear to have been very wealthy. They were mummified, but without all the chemical treatments seen in wealthier burials. A poor mans version of mummification, is how Muhlestein described it.

The only grave goods the team found were palm branches. The mummies were covered with a layer of wrapping, which had ribbons on it, that had badly deteriorated.

Mummies of the World Touring Exhibition to Premiere in California, Tickets On Sale

Tickets went on sale at the weekend for the premiere of Mummies of the World the largest single collection of mummies ever brought together in one exhibition, and the very first exhibition of its kind to be staged in the United States. Opening on July 1, itll take place at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles, and run for a limited time, before moving on to tour an as yet undisclosed string of museums around the US for up to three years.

Organised by American Exhibitions Inc. (AEI), in association with Reiss-Engelhorn Museums (REM) of Mannheim Germany, the exhibition will display with reverence and dignity mummified cadavers plus associated and complimentary artefacts not just from ancient Egypt, but from four continents Asia, Oceania, South America and Europe. Itll cover ages spanning several thousands of years. The oldest mummy featured will date from 6,500 years ago, the most recent the 18th century.

As our Top 10 Modern Mummies list highlights, mummification has been performed, in many different ways and for many different reasons, throughout history right up until the present day. Its not a phenomenon that always occurs by design some bodies become mummified by accident after being buried in bogs or frozen in glaciers.

Mummies of the World will give a broad overview of mummification in all its many forms, and consequently provide viewers hope organisers with an educational and scientific window into the cultures, history and lives of people who came before us.

Mummies International at ‘Mummies of the World’

Click To Watch Video

Dr Zahi Hawass explains Ancient Mummy Recipe

Dr Zahi Hawass examines an Old Kingdom mummy found quite by accident in a tomb at Saqqara in 2007. He explains the mummification process and why each stage was carried out.

CLICK TO WATCH

The Egyptians were very methodical when it came to preserving their dead check out this blog to find out all about the painstaking process they followed (and this video featuring Zahi Hawass).

They would carefully embalm all from famous pharaohs, such as Tutankhamun, Seti I and Ramesses the Great to name just a few that archaeologists have found so far to their pets, be it fish, rabbits or in particular cats, which were considered to be especially sacred (see Dr Salima Ikram discuss animal mummification in this video interview). One of the major displays at Mummies of the World will be of a large selection of Ptolemaic-period Egyptian cat mummies, gathered together on loan from various museums in Germany.

Another mummy that will feature originates from a different part of the world altogether, and predates King Tut by more than 3,000 years. The Detmold Child is an embalmed Peruvian baby of 8-10 months, which survives in incredibly intact condition, despite being radiocarbon dated to between 4504 and 4457 BC thats 1,000 years earlier than even tzi the Iceman. It joins the exhibition on very special loan from the Lippisches Land Museum in Detmold, Germany.

A much more modern mummy on display, also on loan from Germany specifically the collection of Dr. Manfred Baron von Crailsheim will be that of Baron Von Holz, a 17th century nobleman who its thought died in Sommersdorf during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Von Holz was discovered in the family crypt of the von Crailsheim familys late 14th-century castle, still wearing his boots.

Other esteemed guests of relative youth, mummies-wise, will be The Orlovits Family, who derive from of a group of 18th-century mummies discovered in a long-forgotten church crypt in Vc, Hungary in 1994. Michael and Veronica Orlovits and their son Johannis were preserved intentionally or otherwise by the cool, dry air and oil from the pine boards used to build their coffins. They join Mummies of the World on loan from the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest.

Science of Mummification

cat mummy that will be on display at mummies of the world As already mentioned, mummification can be carried out in a number of ways. The ancient Egyptians flavoured drying out a corpse for weeks using natron salt from the bed of the Nile (Dr Ikram explains this on video), then carefully wrapping it in bandages. Techniques practiced in more recent years range from submerging a cadaver in a chemical-filled preservation tank to perfusing it with wax, effectively rendering it a giant human candle.

The science of making and researching mummies will be one of the key focuses of the Mummies of the World exhibition, in a bid to shift peoples perceptions of a practice thats most closely associated with the land of the pharaohs, and lavishly-entombed kings wrapped in dirty bandages. In fact, any body (human or animal) in which soft tissue, skin or hair still exists may be considered a mummy no matter how or where its been preserved.

Broadly speaking, mummies can be divided into two categories: natural (sometimes called spontaneous) and artificial, or human-assisted (sometimes called anthropogenic). Mummies of the former category have been found everywhere from the Andes Mountains and caves in Greenland to acid peat bogs in Scotland and Ireland. Mummies of the latter category originate everywhere from ancient Egypt and Greece to modern day Russia, China and Argentina.

Just to make matters confusing, the exhibition will also highlight a third category of mummification placed somewhere between natural and artificial, as exemplified by the Pazyryk mummies. Found in the Russian Steppes, these were prepared by humans after their death, then left out in the cold to be naturally frozen.

Highlighting the sheer diversity of the mummy phenomenon will be one of the core strands of Mummies of the World. As will be our ability to learn more than ever about mummies through state-of-the-art technologies and techniques. CT-scanning (which has yielded some interesting information about King Tuts cause of death, and the sex of some of the Brooklyn Museums mummies) as well as radiocarbon dating and X-ray have revolutionized the study of mummies, while DNA sampling as Bob Mr Mummy Brier explained in a recent interview with Heritage Key promises to unlock many more of their secrets still.

But is it Ethical to Show Off Dead Bodies?

Any body, human or animal, in which soft tissue, skin or hair still exists may be considered a mummy no matter how or where its been preserved.

Isnt an exhibition based around the display of long-dead, sometimes gruesome human remains slightly macabre, and with it slightly unethical (read Paula’s article for more on the ethics of preserving mummies)? Not so Mummies of the World, say organisers. They claim to have given careful consideration to which mummies theyll exhibit, and why theyre exhibiting them. Theyre confident that Mummies of the World is being staged in the best possible taste, with a strong educational remit, as summed up by this statement from Re. Cecil L. Chip Murray, a member of the California Science Centers Ethics Advisory Council:

The leadership of the California Science Center brings access to our minds of the historic footsteps of humankind as traced through the process of mummification. DNA and other modern specialties allow us to properly determine validity and human ties without desecrating the laws governing respect for human dignity and life. The displays were designed for such times as these and such questions we ponder.

Keep an eye on Heritage Key for photographs from Mummies of the World once it opens, as well of details of future destinations for the touring exhibition. If you make it along to the premier in California, drop us and let us know what you think!

Sandro Vannini’s Photography – King Tut’s Canopic Shrine

Several alabaster artefacts were discovered inside the Tomb of King Tutankhamun (KV62) by Howard Carter when he began excavating the tomb in 1922. The Canopic Shrine was one of the intruiging discoveries for how packed together it was, with a box containing several artefacts in a manner comparable to a Russian doll!

The Canopic Shrine is a large gilded wooden box flanked by a Canopy and supported on a sledge. Inside the shrine was the Canopic Chest, which has four hollowed spaces inside which are sealed by Human-Headed Stoppers. Inside the hollows were four small Canopic Coffinettes.

‘Canopic Shrine’ Slideshow

Heritage Key is working with Sandro Vannini and bringing his extensive catalogue of beautiful photography of Egyptian antiquities onto the world wide web, which we’re sure will fascinate even the most hardcore Egyptologist! To watch a slideshow of the Canopic Shrine, simply click any of the thumbnails below.

See it for yourself in King Tut Virtual

But it doesn’t stop there, as you can also visit King Tut Virtual and see digital recreations of many of the famous artefacts from KV62, walk through the Valley of the Kings, explore the banks of the River Nile in Ancient Egyptian times and even see more of Sandro Vannini’s photography in the virtual gallery.

Sandro Vannini’s Photography

Over a decade of experience in photographing the magnificent artefacts and tombs of Egypt has honed the skills of Sandro, and given him the experience required to capture the beautiful details of the Canopic Shrine. The equipment used to take the amazing photographs is obviously important too, and Sandro used a Hasselblad ELD Ixpress 528C camera to take these images. You can also see more of Sandro’s fantastic photography in his new book with the Director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, “The Lost Tombs of Thebes: Life in Paradise” as well as reading about Sandro’s experiences of shooting the photographs in Thebes on Heritage Key, and watching the video about the Lost Tombs of Thebes featuring Dr Zahi Hawass and Dr Janice Kamrin (Watch the Video).

But for those of you who cant make the trip to the Cairo Museum to see the Canopic Shrine, Heritage Key offers these stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini. But there’s more: you can visit virtual replicas of Tutankhamun treasures in the Heritage Key’s King Tut exhibition, which features a virtual replica of many other breath-taking artefacts such as the Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun.

Don’t miss out on new treasures!

This post is part of a series focussing on amazing photographs from ancient Egypt. Keep checking back as well keep adding new images by Sandro Vannini. To make sure you don’t miss out on any of the updates, simply subscribe by email to receive notifications when new images are uploaded. For the more digitally advanced, there’s also an RSS feed with updates available.

See More Amazing Photography by Sandro

Have a look at some of the other stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini here at Heritage Key:

Ask Sandro

We’ll be sitting down with our favourite photographer for an extended chat soon, so if you have any questions for Sandro we’ll send the answers straight to you!

The Canopic Shrine of Tutankhamun

The gilded wooden canopic shrine was set against the eastern wall of the Treasury positioned facing the west, the land of the dead. On top is a frieze of Solar Uraei (cobras with sun disks on their heads) which takes the form of the per wer. The walls are gessoed, gilded and decorated with paired images of goddesses and gods charged with protecting viscera of the king: Isis and Imsety (the liver), Nephtys and Hapy (lungs), Neith and Duamutef (stomach) and Selket and Qebehsenuef (intestines).

The Canopic Chest has no bottom and inside it atop a smaller sledge with silver coated runners stood a chest carved from a single block of calcite, the lid of the chest echoes the sloping roof of the outer shrine and canopy, while its sides are inclined and are decorated at their corners with carved images of the same four protective goddesses who stood on each side of the canopic shrine.

Each Canopic Jar is topped with a separately carved human/headed stopper in the form of the King in a nemes headdress made of calcite with details such as eyes, lips and ornaments on the protective uraeus and vulture picked out in red and black paint. The four stoppers are marked underneath with a symbol indicating their correct position with the four Canopic Coffinettes inside the hollows.

The miniature version of the royal coffins containing the embalmed and wrapped viscera of the king takes the form of mummiform figure of the king in the nemes headcloth fronted by cobra of the north and vulture of the south. On the chin the curled beard of divinity and the hands grasp a crook and a flail symbols of royal authority. On the sides are figures of Wadjet and Nekhbet as birds, in the talons the goddesses hold shen rings. The coffinettes are adorned to look as if they are covered with feathers (rishi style).

On the interior of the coffinette’s lid is engraved an image of the goddess Nut standing on the hieroglyph for the sky, her winged arms outstretched to protect the king on his journey to the next world. On the inside of the lower half of the coffin are inscriptions also designed to guard the king on his trip to the afterlife.

HDVideo:Tutankhamun’s Burial Treasures: The Canopic Shrine, Chest and Jars

(Read the transcript on the video page)

You can watch more fantastic videos on Heritage Key’s Video Page including Zahi Hawasss insights into the death of King Tut, as well as Kathleen Martinezs hunt for the tomb of Cleopatra. Additionally, you can find out more about Ancient Egypt on Heritage Key, as well as being able to explore the Valley of the Kings and the fascinating KV62 – King Tutankhamun’s tomb – in 3D in our exciting virtual experience! Also be sure to keep up to date on all new postings about Sandro’s photography from Egypt by subscribing to our feed, simply by entering your email address above.

New Photos From The Mummy Chamber Exhibition at Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum have sent us some of the first pictures from their brand new long-term exhibit The Mummy Chamber, an exploration of afterlife beliefs and rituals in ancient Egypt, which as we blogged opened to the public on Wednesday.

Featuring 170 pieces from the museums extensive Egyptian collection, it highlights the elaborate and often strange lengths sometimes gone to in the land of the pharaohs in order to ensure that a deceased individual had the most pleasant and trouble-free experience possible after passing on into the mysterious realm of the dead. That means displays of everything from mummies, coffins and sarcophagi to ritual treasures discovered in burial chambers including statuettes, shabti figurines and books of spells.

Peer Down the Book of the Dead Corridor

Taken at the press preview, the photos show some of the exhibits key artefacts. The first shot is of the Book of the Dead Corridor the section of the exhibit dedicated to highlighting the highly popular practice in ancient Egypt of placing papyrus scrolls in tombs bearing a collection of hymns, spells and instructions believed to be vital in overcoming whatever challenges might be faced on the other side.

Youll notice, laid-out in a long cabinet running the length of the corridor, one of the main attractions at The Mummy Chamber namely a large portion of The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose. Painted onto two sides of a nearly eight-metre long papyrus scroll, and aged well over 3,000 years, this highly impressive example of a version of the Book of the Dead is on display for the very first time. Having originally been acquired by the museum back in 1938, it was only brought out of the archives for vital restoration work two years ago. Other sections of the scroll are still being worked on, and will be added to the exhibition at later dates.

Thothirdes was apparently on a tight budget.

The next picture shows the mummy of Thothirdes, a 26th Dynasty priest at Thebes. One of the aims of The Mummy Chamber is to convey the fact that mummification in ancient Egypt wasnt a practice that was carried out just one way there were techniques of varying quality available, depending on what an ancient Egyptian could afford. The full and most expensive works purification, dehydration, internal organ-storage, cleansing, wrapping and all is outlined in this blog. Thothirdes was apparently on a tight budget.

He had a middle-of-the-road mummification, Edward Bleiberg, the Brooklyn Museums curator of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern art told The New York Times in a recent interview. This is proven by the fact that his organs were stuffed back into his body rather than stored in costly stone jars. The unsophisticated hieroglyphs on Thothirdes coffin further confirms that this priest was a man of modest means. The handwriting is terrible, Bleiberg added.

A Stunning Sarcophagus

The final picture shows three coffins placed in a row, exemplifying how burial caskets could vary in quality significantly too particularly as building techniques and fashions in decoration changed over the centuries. All made from wood, one is small and simple, the next is larger and much more ornately decorated. The last at the back is the stunning outer sarcophagus of Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet. Dating from around 1075-945 BC, it reflects a major shift in burial practice in the 21st Dynasty, when the Egyptian elites stopped building elaborate tombs and instead transferred the scenes normally painted on tomb walls to the coffin.

Its not visible in the picture, but theres damage to the painted surface on the left side of the casket, which has been left unrepaired. This is intended to reveal how the sarcophagus was made by carpenters pinning smaller pieces of wood together with wooden pegs. Artists then plastered and painted the surface to make it appear smooth.

Got pictures of your own from The Mummy Chamber that youd like to share? Then add them to the Heritage Key Flickr group.

Mummy Chamber Exhibit Now Open at Brooklyn Museum

in New York holds one of the largest and most famous collections of Egyptian material in the world. Today, it opens a brand-new, long-term exhibition gathering together 170 pieces from within its Egyptian collection titled The Mummy Chamber.

Its an exploration of the many complex ancient Egyptian afterlife rituals and beliefs, which were all intended to protect a deceased soul from harm once they passed-on, and ensure a pleasant experience on the other side. It covers everything from mummification to the placing of votive goods in burial chambers.

Organised by the Brooklyn Museums Curator of Egyptian Art Edward Bleiberg, The Mummy Chamber will feature a number of highly unique artefacts, from mummies to coffins, canopic jars and shabti funerary figurines, plus all kinds of stelae, reliefs, gold earrings, amulets, ritual statuettes and mummy boards.

Chief among the ancient Egyptian antiquities on display will be a section of the Book of the Dead of Sobekmose a nearly eight metre-long, 3000-year-old papyrus acquired decades ago but until now never before placed on public display.

Mummies

No Egyptian exhibition relating to the afterlife would be worth its salt without a few good mummies. The Brooklyn Museum has one of the finest selections of embalmed ancient bodies going, and has cherry-picked a few beauties both human and animal for this display. Theyll include the mummy of Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet, the 21st Dynasty Royal Priest and Count of Thebes, the mummy of Hor, a minor 13th Dynasty Egyptian king, and the mummy of the Thothirdes, a 26th Dynasty priest at Thebes.

Several of the Brooklyn Museums mummies have recently undergone intensive scientific testing including CT-scans to try and learn a bit more about them such as their sex, age, cause of death and living habits. For example, the mummy of Hor was for 70 years displayed as the body of a young female, until a CT-scan in 2009 proved it had all the anatomical features of a man! Details of these and other findings will form part of the installation, as will an insight into just how some of the mummies were embalmed.

The most thorough process of mummification as outlined in this blog involved the removal and preservation of internal organs and a long period of dehydrating the cadaver. It was an expensive business, and not always within the means of a deceased ancient Egyptian. Some exhibits in The Mummy Chamber will be dedicated to highlighting other, cheaper processes of mummification.

Coffins and Grave Goods

Equally as important as the mummification of a corpse itself was the container it was then placed within. Another key part of this Brooklyn Museum special exhibition will be a look at various types of sarcophagi, and the history of coffin-making for humans and animals in ancient Egypt.

The outer sarcophagi of Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet, for instance, reflects a major shift in burial practice in the 21st Dynasty, when the Egyptian elites stopped building elaborate tombs and instead transferred the scenes normally painted on tomb walls to the coffin. Hor, contrastingly, was encased in an elaborately decorated cartonnage (a case made from layers of linen or papyrus covered with plaster). It exemplifies the way that the painters of the Third Intermediate Period made use of the rich iconography available to them.

Even a deceased Egyptians internal organs removed during the mummification process were sometimes preserved in elaborate vessels, such as canopic jars or chests. Alongside the various different types of coffins, examples of these will also be displayed, as will various kinds of ritual objects tools intended to help the deceased overcome the various challenges they were expected to face in the afterlife. Shabtis were one popular such grave good small figurines whom it was believed could serve as servants or slaves in the afterlife. Expect to see lots of great examples of these too.

Essential Reading in the Afterlife

One of the most common artefacts found placed in ancient Egyptian tombs is copies of the so-called Book of the Dead the name commonly given to the ancient Egyptian funerary text Spells of Coming (or Going) Forth By Day. It was meant to assist the deceased on the other side by arming them with a collection of hymns, spells and instructions useful for overcoming whatever perils might face them in the afterlife.

The museum acquired The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose in 1937, but this will represents the first time its been on public display. It follows two years of painstaking conservation work.

Most commonly, the Book of the Dead was written on a papyrus scroll. The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose will form one of the centerpieces of The Mummy Chamber, and is a particularly impressive example of such an artefact. Covered with text on both sides as well as various illustrations, it was found buried in the grave of Sobekmose a treasurer for Amenhotep III, in the 18th Dynasty. His name recurs frequently throughout the text, accompanied by the title Gold-worker of Amun.

The Brooklyn Museum acquired The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose in 1937, but this will represent the first time its been made available for general viewing. It follows two years of painstaking conservation work to restore it to its former glory. Only a portion of the scroll has been restored so far, but work remains ongoing, and as other sections are made ready theyll be added to the gallery installation.

Been to The Mummy Chamber exhibition at Brooklyn Museum? Tell us what you thought in the comments field below, and share your photographs in the Heritage Key Flickr group.

Sandro Vannini’s Photography – Anubis Shrine and “Anubis Fetishes”

Anubis is the jackal-headed god for the afterlife and mummification, who is seen as a key figure for a Pharaoh to pass into the afterlife. The jackal was associated with associated with death and burials in Ancient Egyptian time for their reputation of scavenging human corpses and eating their flesh. It was common practice to place a figure of Anubis near the entrance of a tomb, and for the priest to don an Anubis mask during the embalming process. This is also one of the reasons the Anubis was selected to sail into New York’s harbour to promote the upcoming King Tut exhibit!

The Anubis Shrine and “Anubis Fetishes” are two artefacts found inside King Tut’s tomb which honour the god, and are now held in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo where they have been photographed by Sandro Vannini. Brought online by Heritage Key, the beautiful details of both these fine artefacts can be appreciated from the comfort of your own computer! You can also see the “Anubis Fetishes” are other stunning artefacts from KV62 in 3D by logging into King Tut Virtual.

‘Anubis’ Slideshow

Heritage Key is working with Sandro and bringing his extensive catalogue of beautiful photography of Egyptian antiquities onto the world wide web, which we’re sure will fascinate even the most hardcore Egyptologist! To watch a slideshow of the Canopic Chest, simply click any of the thumbnails below.

Don’t miss out on new treasures!

See More Amazing Photography by Sandro

Have a look at some of the other stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini here at Heritage Key:

Ask Sandro

We’ll be sitting down with our favourite photographer for an extended chat soon, so if you have any questions for Sandro we’ll send the answers straight to you!

Sandro Vannini’s Photography

Over a decade of experience in photographing the magnificent artefacts and tombs of Egypt has honed the skills of Sandro, and given him the experience required to capture the beautiful details of the Canopic Chest. The equipment used to take the amazing photographs is obviously important too, and Sandro used a Hasselblad ELD Ixpress 528C camera to take these images. You can also see more of Sandro’s fantastic photography in his new book with the Director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, “The Lost Tombs of Thebes:Life in Paradise” as well as reading about Sandro’s experiences of shooting the photographs in Thebes on Heritage Key, and watching the video about the Lost Tombs of Thebes featuring Dr Zahi Hawass and Dr Janice Kamrin.

But for those of you who cant make the trip to the Cairo Museum to see the Canopic Chest, Heritage Key offers these stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini which capture the stunning Canopic Chest from the Tomb of King Tutankhamun. But there’s more: you can visit virtual replicas of Tutankhamun treasures in the Heritage Key VX King Tut exhibition, which features a virtual replica of many other breath-taking artefacts such as the Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun.

The Anubis Shrine and “Anubis Fetishes”

The Anubis Shrine is made of black-painted wood gessoed, with gilded details on the ears, collar and scarf. Silver is inset into the claws and its eyes are inlaid with calcite and obsidian. Embedded into the decor are alternating djed and tjet symbols, signifying Osiris and Isis. The Anubis sits upon an elaborate box shrine which sits on a sledge with four carrying poles.

The role of Anubis in the Book of the Dead was a crucial one, acting as the guide to the afterlife. Anubis played an essential role in the Weighing of the Heart ceremony, where the deceased would be judged and either allowed to pass into the afterlife or have their heart fed to the fearsome Ammut.

Also found inside the Tomb of King Tut were two emblems of Anubis, referred to as the “Anubis Fetishes”. Howard Carter discovered these two artefacts on each corner of the west side of the burial chamber, which was associated with death and the afterlife.

The fetish represents a headless animal skin which is suspended by its tail, and is wrapped around a pole with a calcite base. The base is inscribed with the cartouche of King Tutankhamun, and is referred to as being the beloved of Anubis “who is in the divine booth” on the left feitsh, and “who is in the bandages” in the right fetish.

At the top of both fetishes are a carved lotus bud, which mirrors the end of the animal tails, which end in a blossoming papyrus flower. The animal skins are made from gilded wood with bronze tails, and the concept is based on actual animal skins stuffed with linen.

In the Tomb of King Tutankhamun (KV62), the Anubis Shrine guarded the Treasury, and indeed would be wrongly used as evidence of a curse. Although Dr Zahi Hawass talks about the alleged curse of King Tutankhamun (Watch the Video), the actual translation of the brick found on the floor in front of the Anubis Shrine read “It is I who hinders the sand from choking the secret chamber. I cause the path to be mistaken. I am for the protection of the deceased.” Despite Lord Carnarvon’s death just 6 months after the opening of King Tut’s tomb (Watch the Video), many of the party which originally entered the tomb went on to live long lives.

HD Video: Animal Iconography of Tutankhamun’s Burial Treasures

(Read the transcript on the video page)

You can look at the Heritage Keys video page for all our videos to date and see more archaeologists working in Ancient Egypt. Additionally, you can find out more about Ancient Egypt here at Heritage Key, and if you want to do some discovery of your own, you can explore KV62 – King Tutankhamun’s tomb – in 3D in our exciting virtual experience! Also be sure to keep up to date on all new postings about Sandro’s photography from Egypt by subscribing to our feed, simply by entering your email address above.

Mummy Frenzy with Joyce Filer – Forensic Aspects of Ancient Egypt… and King Tut!

Great news for anybody* who missed out on the previous ‘Mummy CSI’ study days with Joyce Filer, as there is another one coming up. A bonus – on top of the normal forensic aspects of ancient Egypt schedule – is an entire day dedicated to the remains of King Tut and the results of the recently published Tutankhamun DNAstudy.

The findings from the King Tut study have been widely covered and debated since they were published (some interesting responses on the lineage results on Kate Phizackerley’s and Dylan Bickerstaffe’s blogs, and discussion of Tut’s foot on Em Hotep!) but if you want it all explained in real time, with the chance to ask questions – and without Dr Hawass staring – you must attend Joyce Filer’s ‘Tut-Ankh-Amun’ Study Day on May 29th. “All?” you say? In the space of six hours (with a break for afternoon refreshments) you’ll find out which medical conditions King Tutankhamun suffered from, what tests were used in the research and which of his family members have been identified. Of course, there’s room to debate the latter, as well as King Tut’s possible causes of death.

Too much Tut? You can also learn about the latest advances in ‘mummy forensics’ in general and test your own ‘operation’ skills if you attend ‘Forensic Aspects of Ancient Egypt’ on the 19th of June. Hot items on the mummy-menu include:how to identify the age at death and gender of a mummy or skeleton, the fascinating practice of facial reconstructions, and identifying diseases in Egyptian mummies, amongst details of other scientific techniques.

If you want to be well prepared (or at least as prepared as I am) for those two study days, try to track down the complete JAMAarticle and read up on King Tut’s medical history. And just to make sure, do check whether or not you’ll faint upon seeing a ‘live’ mummy. They aren’t all as cute as the Hammer ones. 😉

* Especially for me. I swear on my mummy – may he cut the power (again) if I don’t attend – we’ll be present.

The King Tut Timeline – World Events at the Time of Tutankhamun

I was asked to gather a heap of data for our timeline-testing, and figured King Tut would make the most interesting case. Why?His history is one that contains a combination of ‘estimates’, undecided parentage and debated dates – and causes of death, as a matter of fact – with very few exact facts and dates for the era in which Carter and Carnarvon dug him out. The ‘split’ makes it a good test-case as well. There’s a huge gap between (circa) 1350BCand 1922 during which Pharaoh Tutankhamun was more or less left in peace. Tut’s tomb did not get robbed because the tombs on top of KV62 collapsed (Ramesses VI, as explained in this video by Dr Hawass), saveguarding the Boy King’s burial site until Carter and Carnarvon arrived in Egypt.

Actually, if it were left to Theodore Davis – who discovered KV54, which later would be recorded as Tut’s funerary cache – Tut would still be deep in the sand. On discovering KV54 in 1912, he declared that he had found Tutankhamun’s tomb and that nothing else was to be found in the Valley of the Kings. With his discovery of KV62 in 1922, Howard Carter proved Davis wrong. In 2005, tomb KV63 was located, proving that the Valley still held some secrets.

I’ve supplied all of the above data (and more), but still, it wasn’t enough – I needed some contemporaneous data, for testing purposes. After further digging, these were my favourite ‘discoveries’ of data (more or less) concurrent with the era of King Tut:

The burial of the Egtved Girl in Denmark in 1370BC. She was a Nordic Bronze Age girl whose well-preserved remains were found in a barrow. The oak log that she was buried in is dated to the summer of 1370 BC. She must have been 16 to 18 years old when she died, and was a slim, 160cm tall girl with long blond hair and well-trimmed nails. At her feet were the cremated remains of a 5 year-old child. Meet her in this video.
The end of Minoan culture. The 15th century BC saw the end of the Minoan culture, with most of the Minoan palaces abandoned. The Palace of Knossos, however, remained in use until it was destroyed by fire in 1375 (Minoan works of Art can be found at the Hyksos capital Avaris, Egypt).
Linear B, a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, was in use around Tut’s time. The fire which destroyed Knossos baked the Linear Bclay tablets hard and this disaster preserved many of the tablets. It would take the Phoenicians another (more or less) 300 years to develop their alphabet, which eventually evolved into the Greek alphabet and the one I’m using for this blogpost. 😉
The birth of cremation. While the Egyptians were entombing their pharaohs in elaborate rituals, here in Europe, we gave up on burying the dead, and, apart from the odd accidental bog-mummy, cremation became the norm. Then, as now, the Brits were reluctant to give up the practice of burying their dead, and never fully converted to cremation.
The man with the golden mask (no, not that one). About a hundred years after King Tut’s death, Agamemnon ruled Mycenae as King. But ‘his’ mask was made 400 years before that.
The female Cladh Hallan mummy in Scotland. She died circa 1300BC, and about two days later her body was placed in a bog, and left there for about 6 to 18 months, et voila… a mummy (and one of the only examples of deliberate mummification carried out in ancient times ever found in Britain). Three centuries later, she was re-buried with a 600-year-old male mummy for company.

VIDEO: The Egtved Girl

Curator Flemming Kaul of the National Museum of Denmark introduces us to the Egved Girl.

Meanwhile, there wasn’t much going on at Stonehenge. Although it was probably still in (some kind of) use, the latest construction at the stone circle dates about 250 years before King Tut’s death.

At least, by that time, in Europe, we had started mastering horse-drawn chariots, got the hang of constructing hill forts and developed the first ploughs. But we would have to wait another 100 years for serious action and the start of the Trojan War.

I’m pretty sure I’ll get a request for even more data, so for (non-spoof) events worth mentioning that took place between 1500 and 1200 BCare more than welcome! (I’ll trade you Ancient World in London points for those – I trust splendid – suggestions. You’ll get 10 out of my stash of 429 for each correct answer!)

Deadline: Monday morning.