Unwrapping the dead: changing attitudes to mummified remains. (original) (raw)

2022, pp.44-53 in Speak My Name: Four Egyptian Mummies in Australia

On January Melbourne new aper The Argus ran a remarkable notice on behalf of the Royal Exhibition Building in Vi oria: "THIS AFTERNOON, The Ceremony Of UNROLLING a MUMMY Will Take Place In the CONCERT HALL. Admission: One Shilling; Children, Sixpence". This extraordinary event had arisen from the long-anding competition between rival Au ralian cities Melbourne and Sydney. In , Vi orian businessman John Speechly Gotch-co-founder of publishing house Gordon & Gotch-had visited the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney and was impressed by the mummies on di lay. Shocked to learn that these were the only mummies in Au ralia, he promptly arranged the purchase of two mummies and co ns in Egypt for donation to Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building. "In the matter of mummies", The Age new aper solemnly reported, Gotch was simply "indi osed to allow the northern metropolis to have the advantage of her southern and younger si er". And so, one balmy January a ernoon in , several hundred Melburnians gathered in the Concert Hall to witness the celebrated event. Dr Louis Smith, chairman of the Exhibition Tru ees, introduced proceedings and called upon Dr James Neild to unwrap one of the two mummies-the mummy of a young woman. A well-known medical man who worked as a coroner and le urer in forensic medicine, Dr Neild was also an avid theatre critic. Indulging his flair for the dramatic, he summoned the co n to the age and carefully removed the mummy from within. Turning to his audience, he apologised-with tongue placed firmly in cheek-that he had never examined a body that was , years old and thought it unlikely that he would identify the cause of death. Flourishing his surgeon's knife, Dr Neild cut away the wrappings to reveal the mummified remains. The Age reported the body as being in "a ate of the mo perfe preservation", although The Argus described it as "resembling nothing so much as the butt of a di orted tree fern". Building the tension, Neild invited a linen expert to the age to verify the antiquity of the bandages, before wielding his knife with dexterous showmanship to slice o a lock of the mummy's golden hair. Holding it up, he expressed his surprise at its colour, sugge ing that the woman may have originally been from northern Europe, not realising that hair was o en lightened by embalming fluids. The audience was then invited to mount the age and examine the mummy, one by one. While mo new apers reported the occasion at face value, Melbourne Punch a e ed outrage on behalf of the mummified woman, and repeated with relish an exchange between one lady, who asked for a toe as a keepsake, and Dr Smith, who facetiously replied, "A toe, madam? Take a leg!" Modern approaches stress the importance of treating the dead with respect, and researchers today would never consider unwrapping a mummy as was done in Melbourne in. Rather than unwrapping mummies, which is a highly destructive act, we can use medical imaging techniques such as X-ray and CT scanning to explore beneath the bandages without disturbing the remains. These studies provide valuable insights into aspects of ancient Egyptian lives on which the rich historical record is often silent, including physical anthropology, life expectancy, nutrition and health, and injury and disease-as well as burial practices and funerary beliefs. Figure 4.1 Notice placed in Melbourne newspaper The Argus, 20 January 1893. 4.1 Co in Meruah (NMR27.1) Mummy unidentified (NMR27.3) Co in Padiashaikhet (NMR28.1) Mummy unidentified (NMR28.2) Relative dating* c. 1010-945 BCE (mid-late 21st Dynasty) c. 725-700 BCE (mid-25th Dynasty) c. 30 BCE-200 CE (Roman Period) Absolute dating** 1370-1130 cal BCE (19th-20th Dynasty) 68-129 cal CE (Roman Period. Combined date from * Relative dating based on co in style / mummification techniques ** Absolute dating determined by 14 C, 94.5% probability Figure 5.1 Probability distributions for calibrated ages of two linen samples from the mummy from the co in of Padiashaikhet, and for the combined results. Calibrations were done using OxCal v 4.1. After Sowada, Jacobsen et al. 2011. Figure 5.2 Probability distributions for calibrated ages of two linen samples from the mummy from the co in of Meruah, and for the combined results. Calibrations were done using OxCal v 4.1. After Sowada, Power et al. 2021.