Female Mummy Research Articles

Among the Dead and Their Possessions: A Conservator's Role in the Death, Life, and Afterlife of Human Remains and Their Associated Objects

This paper argues that conservators working on human remains preserve not only the physical remnants of a once-living body, but also the traces of the narratives of a human life and its afterlife. The author examines the conservator's ethical and moral obligations to the dead and their associated artifacts, and considers the conservator's role in both dehumanizing remains into mere "objects," and in rehumanizing such "objects." These issues are explored in relation to the conservation of the remains of three specific individuals and their possessions: an ancient Egyptian female mummy now in a museum in the United States, an ancient Egyptian child excavated on an archaeological site, and a beatified Catholic nun's relics and bone fragment. The author recounts her personal interactions with these three individuals to argue that the traditionally detached, technical role of the conservator may be inappropriate or inadequate when preserving both the tangible and intangible aspects of human remains. The paper suggests that even minimal and mundane conservation practices can take on invasive qualities or new ritual significance when performed on human remains, and that respectful conservation treatments elicit an empathy for, and emotional response to, the remains themselves.

Determination of nicotine in hair samples of pre-Columbian mummies

In the literature, there are reports about the presence of cocaine, nicotine and cannabinoids in the hair of ancient mummies from South America or Egypt. Most of the results have been criticised because of the use of improper analytical techniques or contamination of the sample material. Recently an exhibition of 70 mummies from around the globe was organized at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim, Germany. It shows exhibits assembled by one of the worldfamous mummy projects, involving various specialists for anthropology, pathology, radiology, molecular biology and toxicology. Within this project, hair samples of eight pre-Columbian mummies were analyzed for drugs using modern routine gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric techniques. The tests revealed negative results, except for nicotine in the hair of three mummies. Nicotine was measured in concentrations of 57.5 ng/mg in the hair of a woman, 14.1 ng/mg in the hair of a child and 11.4 ng/mg in the hair of a further female mummy, but all cases revealed negative results for cotinine. The target analysis was performed with limits of detection of 0.04 ng/mg for nicotine and 0.033 ng/mg for cotinine. The washing solutions yielded negative results for both analytes, nicotine as well as cotinine. In our opinion, even with respect to negative results in the washing solutions, the present results cannot definitely confirm an active consumption with body passage in the life time of the analyzed mummies: An external contamination cannot be excluded, e.g. by transfer from smoking visitors or employees during the early collection history of the objects in the 19th century, as well as in their respective lifetime.

The potential for non‐invasive study of mummies: validation of the use of computerized tomography bypost factumdissection and histological examination of a 17th century female Korean mummy

The socio-cultural antipathies of some descendants with regard to invasive examinations of age-old human remains make permission for dissection of Korean mummies of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) difficult to obtain. Overcoming this obstacle necessitated the use of non-invasive techniques, such as multi-detector computerized tomography (MDCT) and endoscopic examination, enabling determination of the preservation status of internal organs of mummies without significantly damaging the mummies themselves. However, MDCT alone cannot clearly differentiate specific mummified organs. Therefore, in much the same way as diagnostic radiologists make their MDCT readings on living patients more reliable by means of comparison with accumulated post-factum data from autopsies or histological studies, examinations of mummies by invasive techniques should not be decried as mere destruction of age-old human remains. Rather, providing that due permission from descendants and/or other relevant authorities can be obtained, dissection and histological examination should be performed whenever opportunities arise. Therefore, in this study, we compared the radiological data acquired from a 17th century mummy with our dissection results for the same subject. As accumulation of this kind of data could be very crucial for correct interpretation of MDCT findings on Korean mummies, we will perform similar trials on other Korean mummies found in forthcoming days if conditions permit.

Gymnophalloides seoi Eggs from the Stool of a 17th Century Female Mummy Found in Hadong, Republic of Korea

It was previously reported that paleoparasitological clues for parasites infecting humans could be found in the feces of mummies of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) in the Republic of Korea. Here, we report the presence of trematode eggs, including Clonorchis sinensis, Metagonimus yokogawai, and Gymnophalloides seoi (a human parasite known in Korea since 1993) in the feces of a recently excavated female mummy in Hadong, Republic of Korea. This is the first report of the discovery of a G. seoi infection in a human mummy. Since Hadong is currently not an endemic area for G. seoi, we speculate that the parasite might have occurred frequently along coastal areas of the Korean peninsula several hundred years ago and that the endemic areas contracted to, more or less, restricted regions since that time.

X-ray microfluorescence with synchrotron radiation applied in the analysis of pigments from ancient Egypt

In this work, X-ray microfluorescence with the synchrotron radiation technique was applied in the analysis of pigments found in decorative paintings in the sarcophagus of an Egyptian mummy. This female mummy, from the Roman Period, which was embalmed with the arms and legs swathed separately is considered one of the most important pieces of the Egyptian Collection from the National Museum (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The measurements were performed at the XRF beamline D09B of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), using the white beam and a Si(Li) detector with resolution of 165 eV at 5.9 keV. The possible pigments found in the samples were: Egyptian blue, Egyptian green frit, green earth, verdigris, malachite, ochre, realgar, chalk, gypsum, bone white, ivory black and magnetite. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to the results in order to verify if the samples belong to the same period of a linen wrapping fragment, whose provenance was well established.

XRF applications in archaeometry: analysis of Marajoara pubic covers and pigments from the sarcophagus cartonage of an Egyptian mummy

AbstractThis work presents two applications of XRF in archaeometry. The first case involved a female mummy from the Roman period, which is considered one of the most important pieces of the National Museum (Rio de Janeiro), because of its unconventional embalming with legs and arms swathed separately. The objective was to characterize the elemental composition of the pigments found in the sarcophagus cartonage and to verify whether they were in accordance with those used by Egyptian craftsmen in the cited period. The elements identified were Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Sr, Hg, and Pb. In the second case, the composition of decorated pottery pubic covers (tangas) from the Marajoara culture was evaluated using EDXRF. Ceramics from the Marajó Island (at the mouth of Amazon River, Brazil) represent one of the most beautiful and sophisticated styles of the pre‐Columbian art. Decorated tangas were used by Marajoara girls probably as part of puberty rites. The analyzed samples were two tangas and four fragments from the National Museum's collection. One fragment (sample 22245) presented a different design pattern that seemed to indicate a different provenance. The elements identified were K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Ga, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, and Pb. Multivariate statistical analysis was applied to the results. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

X-ray microfluorescence analysis of pigments in decorative paintings from the sarcophagus cartonnage of an Egyptian mummy

This work characterized the elemental composition of the pigments used in decorative paintings from the sarcophagus cartonnage fragments of an Egyptian mummy, using μXRF with Synchrotron Radiation. This female mummy (n.158) is considered one of the most important pieces of the National Museum (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) because of its unconventional embalming with legs and arms swathed separately. The measurements were performed at the XRF beamline D09B of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), using white beam and a Si(Li) detector with resolution of 165eV at 5.9keV. The elements found in the samples were: Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Sr, Hg and Pb.

The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration, and: Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle: the Brutal Tongue (review)

Reviewed by: The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration, and: Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle: the Brutal Tongue Roger Luckhurst (bio) Piya Pal-Lapinski , The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture: A Reconsideration (Hanover: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005), xx + 156 pages, paperback, $24.95 (ISBN 1 58465 429 5). Christine Ferguson , Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle: the Brutal Tongue (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) x + 192 pages,hardback, £45 (ISBN 0 7546 5082 0). Both volumes, although from very different areas of cultural inquiry and method, attempt to describe the flickering ambiguity of a marginal figure in Victorian society. Pal-Lapinski examines the odalisque, the exotic woman, a being without racial or geographic fixity, who flits through Southern Europe, Arabia and India unnerving colonial commentary wherever she appears. Ferguson focuses on the articulate brute or savage, another shifting marker with distinctly contradictory roles in Victorian philology, anthropology, biology and the late Victorian romance. Both critics also tend to regard popular forms as the primary vehicle for the cultural articulation of their ambiguous figures. Otherness is therefore redoubled: marginal figures in marginal texts. Pal-Lapinski's slim but dense volume owes much of its theoretical armature to post-colonial criticism. The exotic woman, the woman of the harem or zenana, was the locus of repulsion/attraction in travel narratives, paintings and novels. Due to the different patterns of colonial engagement, the French tended to be obsessed with the Arabian or North African figure, the English with the women of the Indian sub-continent. In fact, she convincingly suggests we should extend this feminine trope into Europe (the exoticism of the Southern Italian or Spanish woman) and also use it to read the dense and contradictory [End Page 142] investments of French and English writers in Egypt: 'the exotic female body has always been inscribed by a kind of métissage, a racial elusiveness' (xv). Pal-Lapinski suggests that much criticism has regarded the figure of the odalisque as a figure of oppression or domination.In what is now a familiar move, suitably deferential to Edward Said's foundational Orientalism but seeking to move beyond it, the book proposes a refinement that suggests that nineteenth-century discourses of exoticism 'produce the body of the odalisque via a dissident textuality that resists closure and implodes the imperatives of ethnography, threatening the coherence of "whiteness" as a racial category' (xvi). The exotic woman may well be the mark of racial subjugation, but also of defiance, evasion or subversion, and these disturbances can be traced in colonial texts. In her opening contextual chapter, Pal-Lapinski usefully situates the interplay of travel narratives (Julia Pardoe's Cityof the Sultan), painting (Ingres' Turkish Bath or Frederick Lewis' The Hareem), sensational colonial exposés (Taylor's Confessions of a Thug) and Gothic novels (Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya, or the Moor) in the production of the figure of the exotic woman. Chapter two explores the fearful figure of the female poisoner in Wilkie Collins' Armadale and Legacy of Cain. Chapter three looks at exotic woman as vector of disease in colonial settings, moving beyond familiar discussions about the racializing of successive epidemics of Asiatic cholera to consider the Anglo-Indian novels of Flora Steel. Chapter four unearths the medical concerns about the effect of the tropics on the reproductive capacities of white settler women, linking the fear of 'tropical ovaries' or 'deranged menstruation' with the fevered fantasy of Bram Stoker's Lair of the White Worm. Chapter five also works hard to link together the Orientalized jewellery of René Lalique (worn by Sarah Bernhardt and associated not just with daring actresses but also the exoticized demi-monde of bejewelled courtesans) and Bram Stoker's Jewel of the Seven Stars. Here the female mummy's infiltration of a strapping young English lass is a 'hybrid vampire odalisque-queen that not only signified the fragility of narratives of progress but also transforms imperial history into nightmare' (107). The book ends with a chapter on the figure of the Italian opera diva, looking at the supernatural fictions of Bulwer-Lytton...

Pigments analysis in cartonages of an Egyptian mummy of the Roman period using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

This work evaluates the chemical composition of pigments used in decorative paintings in the coffin cartonage fragments and linen wrappings of an Egyptian mummy, using X-ray microfluorescence with synchrotron radiation technique. The measures were obtained at the XRF beamline of the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (LNLS). This Roman period female mummy is one of the most important mummies in the National Museum because of its unconventional embalming with disarticulated legs and arms. X-ray fluorescence analysis is a widely used spectroscopic technique in archaeometry for investigating the chemical composition of pigments in manuscripts, paintings, ceramics and other artifacts, metal alloys, and stones. Knowledge of composition allows pigment characterization through major or minor constituents, and makes it possible to establish the provenance, age, and consequently, the authenticity of the artifact.

First identification of an ancient Egyptian mummified human placenta

AbstractIn the course of excavations at Thebes‐West, Upper Egypt, a human organ was recovered from the poorly preserved torso of a female mummy, which was archaeologically dated to the New Kingdom. In the field, the organ was tentatively identified as a liver, but without much certainty. After rehydration and fixation, histological observations led to a rejection of this diagnosis and resulted in the hypothesis that this organ could be a placenta. Comparative histology, performed on an experimentally mummified modern human placenta, revealed a close similarity of microstructural features, which strongly supports the diagnosis of the organ as a placenta. In this paper, we can therefore present the first report of an ancient Egyptian mummified human placenta and provide new insight into Egyptian funeral practices in general, and the fate of the excavated female in particular. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ultrastructure of skin and hair of an Egyptian mummy. Transmission and scanning electron microscopic observations.

The skin of a female Egyptian mummy, embalmed 100-300 A.D., was studied by transmission and scanning electron microscopy. After rehydration with cacodylate buffer containing sucrose, the ordinary technique for transmission electron microscopy was performed on skin of the right shoulder. In epidermal cells, mitochondria and their cristae were identified. Between epidermal cells, desmosomes, half the normal size, were found. In the dermis, collagen bundles and elastic fibres were observed. The collagen fibres had a diameter of 67-91 nm, and the band pattern showed 10-12 sub-bands per one period of 55-61 nm length. The elastic fibres had less amorphous substance than normal and a fibrillar beaded pattern. The dermal components of the skin were well preserved in spite of the mummification. Throughout the dermis and the subcutaneous fatty tissue, a number of bacterial spores were found showing a characteristic appearance. Scanning electron microscopy of hairs showed a layer of the preserving material surrounding hairs, and under it a normal cuticle was seen.

Mummy of the "Elder Lady" in the Tomb of Amenhotep II: Egyptian Museum Catalog Number 61070

An unidentified female mummy found in a cache of great kings and queens in 1898 in the Valley of the Kings was examined from the viewpoint of Egyptology, x-ray cephalometry, biostatistics, and biochemistry. The result was the identification of Queen Tiye, of the Eighteenth Dynasty, wife of Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaton.

Peripheral blood elements found in an Egyptian mummy: a three-dimensional view.

Intact peripheral blood elements were found within an intracranial mass, possibly eithern an antemortem subdural hematoma or a postmortem blood clot, removed from a 2200-year-old Egyptian female mummy. Surface topographies of neutrophils and lymphocytes were similar. Some erythrocytes partially retained their biconcave disk shape; others were spherical. Individual platelets exhibited pseudopodia.