Technology casts doubt on mummies

[Davita]

Technology casts doubt on mummies

    July 14 2007 at 11:07AM 
 
By Michelle Nichols

All of Egypt's royal mummies will get identity checks after scientists found one was wrongly identified as a pharaoh, Egypt's chief archaeologist said.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Thursday he would use computed tomography, or CT, scanning and DNA to test more than 40 royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

In June, the mummy long thought to have been King Tuthmosis I was found to be a young man who died from an arrow wound, Hawass said. History showed Tuthmosis I died in his 60s.

'We will have to look for the mummy of the father now'
"I am now questioning all the mummies," he told Reuters in an interview. "We have to check them all again.

"The new technology now will reconfirm or identify anything for us."

The Egyptian Museum has had CT scanning equipment for just two years and its first DNA laboratory was installed in April.

The CT scan allows the mummies to be virtually "unwrapped" without damaging them. Teenage Pharaoh Tutankhamun was one of the first mummies to be examined with the technology in 2005.

Hawass said only the identity of the mummy of Tutankhamun was certain because he was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 still in a sealed coffin in his tomb.

Many royal mummies were taken from their tombs and hidden elsewhere - sometimes in other tombs or in temples - to protect them from desecration and looting hundreds of years after their deaths.

Last week, Hawass said the ancient mummy of Tuthmosis I's daughter, Queen Hatshepsut, had been identified and it was found she had been a fat woman in her 50s, with diabetes and rotten teeth, who died of bone cancer.

Her DNA had also been matched to Ahmose Nefertari, who Hawass described as Hatshepsut's grandmother.

"We will have to look for the mummy of the father now," said Hawass, who was in New York promoting a Discovery Channel series that has followed his journey to identify Hatshepsut.

Hatshepsut's mummy was found in the tomb belonging to her wet-nurse, Sitre In. He said her mummy was one of six possible royal mummies that had been left by Carter in the tombs where they were discovered because they could not be identified.

"The other five should be very interesting. Now, with DNA and CT scanning, we can find out," Hawass said. "I think there is a mummy found in the tomb of Seti II that I believe this should be the mummy of Tuthmosis I."

Among the royal mummies still to be discovered is that of Queen Nefertiti, the mother-in-law of Tutankhamun.

"We still have many questions that we have to answer," Hawass said.

 
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=nw20070714103837811C839316&set_id=

[Davita]

Mummy Was Painted Red With Spanish Lead
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News



_{In for Analysis
The mummy, known as Demetrios is directed into scanning machine. Recent X-ray fluorescence performed on the mummy revealed it was decorated in a red coloring that was likely imported from Spain.}

Aug. 14, 2007 — Egyptian mummies may be more international than previously thought, as analysis of one such mummy in the Brooklyn Museum's collection has revealed a surprising connection to Spain.

The mummy, named "Demetrios," turns out to have been wrapped in linen that was decorated with red pigment containing lead that originated in Spain, according to the museum.

"We now think the ancient Egyptians made very specific material choices for mummy preparation," Lisa Bruno, the museum's lead object conservator, told Discovery News.

"Red was thought to ward off danger," she added, explaining that the lead-based paint is toxic, so the Egyptians might have been fighting poison with poison.

Demetrios recently underwent X-ray fluorescence, a process whereby objects and materials are exposed to short wavelength X-rays that excite atoms and cause them to release radiation. This radiation has energy characteristics of the atoms within the object, so the technique helps researchers to determine what chemicals might be present.

Bruno said the lead painted on Demetrios matches the chemical profile of lead from Spain's Rio Tinto region, which has been a site for silver and other mining operations for over 5,000 years.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/14/mummy_arc.html?category=archaeology
 
 

[Davita]

<sub>The Brooklyn Museum


The Wealthy Gent
This is an image of a virtual reconstruction of the portrait of Demetrios. Demetrios was excavated from a Roman cemetery in Hawara, Egypt in 1911, and is believed to date between 30 B.C. and 395 A.D.</sub>

[Davita]

She explained that lead is a byproduct of smelting to extract silver. It is then likely that Spain either exported raw lead at the time of Demetrios' death from around 94-100 A.D., or the lead was made into Spanish paint before making its way to Egypt.

"At the time, Egypt was in the Roman Empire, so the finding reveals how widespread trade was throughout the empire," Bruno said. "The mix of cultures probably was not unlike what exists today in Egypt."

Imported materials would have been hard to come by and therefore probably expensive, so Bruno and her team now speculate that Demetrios was a very wealthy individual. "Red shroud mummies," of which Demetrios is an example, are exceptionally rare, with only 10 known to exist in the entire world.

Only males received the full red treatment, with females having just touches of red on their more multicolored linen wrappings.

Red shroud mummies have portraits painted on wood that were placed over the wrapped bodies. Although Demetrios additionally had the number "89" painted on the wood, a CT scan revealed he likely was in his 50's at the time of his death. Bruno said his portrait does indeed look like that of a distinguished gent in his 50's.

Lawrence Boxt, director of cardiac MRI's and CT scans at New York's North Shore University Hospital, supports the theory that Demetrios was wealthy because he "died a quiet, natural death" with little wear and tear on his bones and body, which otherwise would have suggested a typical laborer's life.

Boxt even thinks slaves or other workers might have carried around Demetrios, due to the relatively pristine and unused nature of his bones.

Demetrios is just one of many human and animal mummies that will undergo extensive analysis in the coming weeks. The Brooklyn Museum's animal mummy collection is especially diverse, Bruno said, with everything from crocodiles to dogs to an Egyptian mongoose.

After the study, the mummies will form part of a touring exhibit, "To Live Forever," which will open next summer at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.






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