Brooklyn Museum Examines Mummies
Ancient Egyptian Human and Animal Remains Studied by Experts
Using modern scientific methods, scholars at the Brooklyn Museum analyzed its ancient Egyptian mummies in preparation for a touring special exhibition.
From Summer 2008 through Fall 2011, New York's Brooklyn Museum will circulate to more than 10 American venues To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum, a special exhibition about ancient Egyptian art, funerary practices and religious beliefs. The nationwide tour commences on July 13, 2008 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In preparation for the show, the museum's conservation laboratory embarked upon an extensive study of the institution's five human and nearly 50 avian, feline and crocodile mummies on July 5, 2007, led by Dr. Edward Bleiberg, Curator of Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art.
In earlier generations, scholars studied ancient Egyptian mummified remains by means of autopsy. During the last two decades, experts have increasingly utilized non-invasive scientific techniques to determine, for example, the condition of the deceased's bones and approximate age at the time of death. This latest endeavor by the Brooklyn Museum was conducted by its respected staff members, the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, California and the University of Bristol in England.
The Brooklyn Museum's international team of specialists employed state-of-the-art technologies in a thorough examination of its mummies.
- Carbon-14 (radiocarbon) dating yielded dates for when the mummies were created.
- CT (Computed Tomography) scanning facilitated the examination of a mummy's interior. After reviewing the remains' numerous pictures, experts determined that the embalmers included ceremonial jewelry and other objects within the layers of linen that wrapped one corpse.
- X-ray fluorescence (XRF) helped to analyze the mummies' painted-linen bandages and shrouds.
- GC Mass Spec revealed the chemicals used during mummification. The comparative study of test results from other mummies allowed Egyptologists to trace changes in the embalming process over the course of 3000 years of ancient Egyptian history.
To Live Forever... features clay and granite vessels, magical faience amulets, protective gold jewelry made for the Egyptian elite and the painted Coffin of the Lady of the House Wentwahset (Dynasty 19, ca. 1292-1190 B.C.). Included in the exhibition is the CT-scanned Mummy of Demetrios (1st Century A.D.) and its painted portrait, both owned by the Brooklyn Museum and reunited since their 1911 discovery in a Roman cemetery by an archaeological team in Hawara, Egypt. The exhibition explores how the ancient Egyptian rich and poor prepared for the afterlife and their beliefs about what they would encounter once there.
CT scanning of mummies is a first for both the Brooklyn Museum and North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, where the tests were conducted. Demetrios' mummy was the study's first human subject. Dr. Lawrence Boxt, Director of Cardiac MRIs and CT Scans at the Long Island medical facility, divulged to The New York Times (August 6, 2007) that the corpse was relatively intact, showing no signs of injury, malnutrition and degenerative disease.
Sources:
- Bryan, Betsy M. and Erik Hornung. The Quest for Immortality: Hidden Treasures of Egypt (exh. cat.). New York: Prestel Publishing, 2002.
- D'Auria, Sue, Peter Lacovara and Catharine H. Roehrig. Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1992.
- Taylor, John H. Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt...Treasures from the British Museum (exh. cat.). Santa Ana: Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2005.
- Walker, Susan (ed.), et al. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt (exh. cat.). New York: Routledge Publishing, 2000, 23-25, 48-49.
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