Wrapped in gauze and depicted as horror characters in Hollywood movies, Egyptian mummies have long created an irresistible attraction to scientists. Now, as the British Museum is about to hold a special exhibition, the human side of the Nile mummies, one of which even has modern-day tattoos, will be revealed.
Using the most advanced scientific techniques for studying mummies, including tomography, the British Museum Egyptologists have been able to construct the most detailed possible picture of what is hidden. hidden beneath the cloth wrapped around the mummies, including the secrets they took to the grave thousands of years ago.
Woman with tattoos
One of the eight mummies that will participate in the show was found just seven years ago. This mummy is so well preserved that archaeologists can almost clearly see the tattoo on the inside of his right calf with the naked eye.
In Ancient Greek, tattoo was pronounced MIXAHA, or Michael. This tattoo is a symbol of the Archangel Michael, who appears in both the Old and New Testaments. This symbol has been found before in ancient churches and on rock faces. But scientists have never seen it in the shape of a tattoo.
The owner of this tattoo is a woman about 1m58 tall, who lived in a Christian community on the banks of the Nile and died around 700 AD. Her body was wrapped in linen and wool and was mummified in dry conditions.
This mummy was found at an archaeological site in a cemetery in Sudan. While other Egyptian mummies had their organs removed before the mummification process took place, CT scans show that this Sudanese mummy has perfectly preserved organs.
According to Dr Daniel Antoine, curator of the anthropology section of the British Museum, the reason this woman has the tattoo may be for protection purposes. It is still unclear who this tattoo was in ancient Sudan and whether other indigenous people saw it because the tattoo is located high on the inside of the right calf. The British Museum also admits it is still uncertain how long the skirts were worn by women living by the Nile in 700 AD.
The Age of Mummy
The potential upcoming exhibition will be one of the British Museum’s most successful, continuing a tradition of blockbuster displays based on archaeological finds from Ancient Egypt.
One of the messages that the British Museum wants to send is that mummification is not exclusive to pharaohs. For this reason, the curators at the museum deliberately selected mummies from different periods and different circumstances. The mummies have an age difference of about 2-50 years at the time of death. Some were discovered by explorers more than 100 years ago while others were found more recently on the banks of the Nile in what is now Sudan.
New analyzes provide evidence that, like modern humans, the ancient Egyptians also suffered from a number of diseases due to high cholesterol levels and they also suffered from toothaches.
“What we intend to do in the next exhibition is to investigate the lives of eight people in the past. We wanted to convey the idea that these are not objects, they are human beings of flesh and blood. We wanted to capture the human side of these people,” said John Talor, curator at the British Museum’s Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan.
Bone scan technology allowed the team to determine the age of the skeletons based on the damage to the bones. In addition, these images show how the ancient inhabitants of the Nile river suffered from cardiovascular and dental diseases.“
The CT scans revealed that two of the eight mummies had… signs of cardiovascular disease and could lead to a heart attack or stroke. This could be a result of a habit of consuming high-fat foods or it could be a genetic factor,” Dr Antoine said.Besides that, he also said that another big problem that has been discovered is that the oral health of most adults is extremely bad. They have large foci of inflammation. In some cases the foci of inflammation were so large that they may have contributed to their deaths.
The menu of the ancient Egyptians was quite extensive. They eat fish, some meat, drink beer, eat bread and fruit high in sugar like dates.Entitled “Ancient Life: New Discoveries”, the exhibition will take place in May this year, promising to give visitors a new look at the mummies in a time when they were still alive. were ancient inhabitants of the Nile River, from royal princes to black people, in the ordinary aspects of life.
