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Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) I found that there was some Belzoni-related material, as well as a coffin and royal head of a statue with an acquisition date of 1819 which called for further research. For a long time it was usual to criticise 356 understanding egyptian mummies and disparage early travellers and collectors, particularly Belzoni, as little more than pillagers: this view is now rightly challenged. I hope that this chapter demonstrates how it is possible, using such narratives, to propose contexts for early acquisitions and also shed some
beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley. 1 Today, owing to the rapidly evolving capabilities of modern science, their remains provide an unparalleled body of evidence through which to investigate life and death in the past. Ancient Egyptian mummies spark great public interest and imagination. Purported to possess miraculous healing properties, mummy powder became a sought-after ingredient in medicinal remedies until the validity of the claims was discredited and mummies became objects of entertainment and
and the location of the Kellis 2 cemetery. (Created by the author.) 288 understanding egyptian mummies 23.2 Excavation plan of the Kellis 2 cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. (Created by the author.) between 100 and 450 AD (Molto 2002: 243; Stewart, Molto and Reimer 2003: 376). Systematic excavations commenced in 1992 and, to date, have recovered the remains of 770 individuals (Figure 23.2). The cemetery is characterised by the presence of mud-brick enclosures, signifying mausolea, and low mud-brick mastaba-like superstructures, and it is densely filled
study, which after considerable research produced some positive results. In particular, 236 base pairs of the S. haematobium cytochrome oxidase C fragment were sequenced from the bladder tissue of an Egyptian mummy known as Besenmut, a priest in the temple of Min in Akhmim, now in Leicester (700 BC). This allowed the parasite to be located to an area and time. Other tests such as immunocytochemistry supported this result (Rutherford 2002). Today ancient DNA work is widely reported, but at the time of the schistosomiasis project (1995) the research was still in its
IV in 1903 led to a new line of enquiry for Elliot Smith (Smith 1903b) and the beginning of a study of considerable importance to the future of anthropology and Egyptology. Although others had unrolled and studied ancient Egyptian mummies before, there were few who had approached this as a scientific study. The use of radiology to study Tuthmosis IV was not the first time a mummy had been X-rayed (William Flinders Petrie X-rayed a mummy in 1897: Petrie 1898), but it was the first time this had been done as part of a thorough scientific investigation, providing an
), ‘How domestic animals have shaped the development of the human species’, in L. Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity (Oxford and New York: Berg), 71–96. Collier, M. and Quirke, S. (2004), The UCL Lahun Papyri: Religious, Literary, Legal, Mathematical and Medical (Oxford: Archaeopress). David, R. (2008), ‘The International Ancient Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank’, in R. David (ed.), Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 237–46. David, R. (2013), ‘Ancient Egyptian medicine: the contribution of twenty
subvert art itself. Fuelled by the prevalence of Egyptian mummies discovered, traded and ultimately commodified throughout the nineteenth century, the spectre of Mrs Potiphar's undiscovered corpse haunts discussions of aesthetic media. Ground mummy was used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a pigment (often called ‘Mummy Brown’) for both oil paint and glazes, and was in use by artists including Edward Burne-Jones and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Its colour, though variable, was a light brown with sometimes a grey tinge. 69
. 22 Instead of recording her observations in front of the learned gentlemen, Dorothy felt obliged to put her notebook away within the institutional space of the museum. She also restricted herself to viewing ‘a very large collection of butterflies, moths, beetles’, ‘an extremely beautiful and valuable collection of shells’ and an Egyptian mummy rather than the anatomical specimens. 23
. Roman and Greek antiquities were purchased, said to be of great interest to numerous school pupils in Grahamstown: thus the museum had to cater to its educational base in schools where a classical education was still at a premium. More Roman and Chinese materials were added later and the museum acquired an Egyptian mummy in 1908. 37 However, the relationship between museum and university, which seemed to
to Egypt is taken in the narrative’s past, the leading explorer being Mr Trelawny who brought back various objects including an Egyptian mummy, that of Queen Tera. Mr Trelawny and his circle, including his daughter, Margaret, and Margaret’s devoted admirer, our narrator Malcolm Ross, later make the journey from London to Cornwall as this is a relatively isolated place where the ‘Great Experiment