Anthropological and analytical studies of two Egyptian human mummies’ heads from Deir-el-Medineh

Abstract

• Analysis of two Egyptian mummies heads from Deir-el-Medineh. • Characterization of two types of embalming materials by FT-IR and GC-MS. • Identification of fatty matter, Pinaceae resin, mastic resin and natron. This paper focused on a multidisciplinary study of mummification balms’ constituents from two Egyptian mummies’ heads belonging to the Osteology collection of the Confluences museum in Lyon (France). These individuals come from the same necropolis, Deir el-Medineh in Upper Egypt. They were coated with particular substances not often encountered in studies of mummification balms. The objective was to identify the composition of the two types of samples found on each individual: an amorphous material resembling mummy balm and a sandy substance. The knowledge of the anthropology and the mummification practices associated to analytical chemistry study of the balms permitted to obtain a global characterization of these persons. The FTIR and GC-MS results notably permitted to observe (i) the presence of fat and beeswax within the amorphous black samples and (ii) the presence of natron, fatty matter and mastic resin within the sandy samples; this types of samplings are uncommon in ancient Egypt.