Our two Roman Period mummies have no hearts, in spite of one having a fine mummy portrait, which was apparently an expensive thing to have. They were more concerned with their portrait than with mummification. Those who are mummified are the wealthier people and they do participate in Egyptian culture to a certain extent. Most of the mummies you get in the end are not even Egyptians, like our Demetris. In fact, it does improve over time, although at the end it seems to fall apart, mostly because they are much less interested. The recipe changes over time as if there is a conscious effort on the part of the embalmers to improve the process. In general, what they are finding is that the resins that are used for both disinfecting and dehydrating the interior. They are taking samples of as many mummies as they can, including Brooklyn's mummies, and are testing the chemical compositions of the resins that were used in mummification. There is a study going on now at Bristol University that is looking at the history of mummification. Is uncrated at North Shore University Hospital (Adam Husted, Brooklyn Museum)Īre there other ways to test and compare mummification techniques? The mummy of royal prince, Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet (ca. Canopic packets are when they mummify the organs and then they put them back in the body, rather than removing them completely and placing them in canopic jars. They both seem to have canopic packets, which Pasebakhaemipet doesn't have. Neither Thothirdes nor Hor, who were 22nd Dynasty, immediately in the next period, had a heart, which is an indication that they would have had the cheaper method of mummification. He's probably the highest status individual in the group of four, and he still had his heart which is exactly what Herodotus, who is much later, tells you is available in the most expensive method of mummification. Dynasty 21 has the best coffins and they have relatively high quality mummifications, which we see with Pasebakhaemipet. With the four we certainly did see differences in mummification, even in very close time periods. What are some differences in mummification techniques between the periods of the mummies you scanned? We are also looking at the history of any disease that we might be able to see, but then also history of mummification because different periods and people of different social status received different methods of mummification. We are basically looking for confirmation of sex, age at death, and cause of death, if we can find it.
What is the purpose and significance of scanning these mummies? This summer we had enough funding to scan four mummies and so we chose Pasebakhaemipet of the 21st Dynasty, Hor and Thothirdes of the 22nd Dynasty, and an unnamed Roman period mummy. We scanned one of these six, Demetris, a first-century Roman period mummy, in 2007. Six of our 11 mummies are complete, the rest are parts, significant parts, but parts. Why did you choose to scan these four mummies out of the Brooklyn Museum's 11 human mummies? He described what's been learned so far and the future plans for the scans, while emphasizing the importance of non-intrusive mummy unwrappings, the open exchange of scholars, excavating in museum storerooms, and public outreach. Bleiberg discussed the Brooklyn Museum's fascinating mummies and their CT scans with ARCHAEOLOGY's Morgan Moroney. Thothirdes also of the 22nd Dynasty had also been misidentified as a woman, while the fourth, an unnamed first-century Roman period mummy still had some brain left in him. "Lady" Hor of the 22nd Dynasty was identified as a man after 70 years of misidentification (712-664 B.C.). Pasebakhaemipet, a Theban "prince" of the 21st dynasty, had a reed in his throat (1070-945 B.C.). The scans produced vast amounts of data to be sorted and analyzed, but even immediate, preliminary readings of the scans revealed some very unusual discoveries. The trip was smooth and the CT scans went without trouble.
The mummies on board were from various periods dating from the Third Intermediate Period (1064-656 B.C.) to the Roman Period (30 B.C.-A.D. Jessie Chusid, Amgad Makaryus, and Karen Lisk of North Shore volunteered their time and services to scan four of the oldest patients they had ever encountered. On June 23, 2009, a team from the Brooklyn Museum supervised by Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art, and Lisa Burno, Head Objects Conservator, transported four mummies from Brooklyn to North Shore University Hospital for CT scans. How new CT scans produced much more than fancy images of bonesĮdward Bleiberg (Courtesy Edward Bleiberg)