3D-rendered CT images of mummified individual showing the carapace and broken sections Photo: Sowada et al, PLOS ONE, courtesy Chau Chak Wing Museum and Macquarie Medical Imaging
An ancient Egyptian mummy’s painted mud shell may have been a budget-conscious way of copying elite embalming methods, write researchers in the science journal Plos One. The shell, found under the mummy’s wrappings, was first identified in 1999, but has only now been fully revealed thanks to modern CT scans. It covers the entire body, and was painted white over the head and red over the face. The study also revealed that the mummy held in the collection of the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney, Australia is probably that of a woman, who was 26 to 35 years old when she died around 1200-1113 BC.
New analysis of a more than 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy has revealed a rare mud carapace (shell), a study suggests.
Studies of mummified bodies from the late New Kingdom to the 21st Dynasty (around 1294-945 BC) have occasionally reported a hard resinous shell protecting the body within its wrappings.
This is especially the case for royal mummies of the period.
Researchers have now described the discovery of a rare painted mud carapace enclosing an adult mummy in Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney, Australia.
In addition to its practical restorative purpose, the authors suggest the mud carapace gave those who cared for the deceased the chance to emulate elite funerary practices of coating the body in an expensive imported resin shell with cheaper, locally available materials.
In a potentially ancient case of mistaken identity, a new study reveals that an Egyptian mummy likely wasn t the person named on the front of its coffin.
Aussie scientists performed computerised tomography (CT) scans and radiocarbon dating on the mummy and coffin, currently housed at the University of Sydney.
The mummified female body dates as far back as the year 1200 BC, while the coffin in which the mummy resides was constructed in the year 1000 BC, they found.
The body may have been inserted by a crafty Egyptian dealer into what was at the time an empty coffin at some point during the 19th century, just before it was bought for the university.
New analysis of a more than 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy has revealed a rare mud carapace (shell), a study suggests.
Studies of mummified bodies from the late New Kingdom to the 21st Dynasty (around 1294-945 BC) have occasionally reported a hard resinous shell protecting the body within its wrappings.
This is especially the case for royal mummies of the period.
Researchers have now described the discovery of a rare painted mud carapace enclosing an adult mummy in Chau Chak Wing Museum, Sydney, Australia.
In addition to its practical restorative purpose, the authors suggest the mud carapace gave those who cared for the deceased the chance to emulate elite funerary practices of coating the body in an expensive imported resin shell with cheaper, locally available materials.
In ancient Egypt, the must-have fashion for any royal mummy taking a trip to the afterlife was a resin shell to cover your wrapped remains. But what to do if you can t get your hands on these expensive and imported resin carapaces? Just use mud, obviously.
Archaeologists restudying an ancient Egyptian mummy recently discovered it’s an extremely rare example of an individual who appears to be preserved in textile wrappings and good old-fashioned mud. One theory behind this “muddy mummy” is that it s an example of elite emulation, a lower-cost alternative to the pricy resin shells found in the wrappings of royal bodies from this period.