Mar 28: The Nicholson Museum in Sydney, Australia made the exciting discovery that a coffin which was often left in an acrylic display case in a classroom used for workshops and field trips turned out to hold a centuries-old mummy, according to The Washington Post.
The outside of the coffin showed a woman at rest which was carved into the dark wood along with hieroglyphs that said the occupant was Mer-Neith-it-es, a high priestess from the temple of the goddess Sekhmet.
The sarcophagus dated from the 6th century B.C. and was purchased by Sir Charles Nicholson from an Egyptian antiquities market something between 1857-1858.
Nicholson ended up leaving hundreds of items, including the coffin, to the University of Sydney that would launch the museum in his name.
However, the records at the museum indicated that the vessel was empty or only contained debris so it remained out of public view.
Museum archaeologists opened the coffin last year, expecting only to find “few residual bandages and bones from a mummy removed by tomb robbers in the 19th century,” senior curator Jamie Fraser wrote in the March issue of Muse, a University of Sydney publication.
Researchers then had to face the ethical debate of further excavating the mummy in order to learn more about it or allow it to remain in place.
The university said that most mummies usually fall under two types: those in good condition without reason to be investigated and those bought in markets which are often in poor shape so it’s necessary to excavate them.
Mer-Neith-it-es was clearly in the second category, officials said, since they also couldn’t assume that the name inscribed on the coffin was the actual mummy.
“At the time [in 1850s Egypt] mummies were popular souvenirs,” the university said in a statement. “Anyone could go to a market and buy a coffin and ask for a mummy to be ‘thrown in’ for a few extra quid. Often the mummy and the coffin aren’t matched.”
The university noted that one of its mummies, Pediashakhet, lived around 100 B.C. and it was placed in a coffin from 700 B.C.
Fraser said that it was clear that ancient tomb robbers had already disturbed the contents of the coffin so in interest of preserving the remains from Sydney’s heat and humidity the museum moved forward with the excavations.
First, they conducted a CT scan to get a full image of the coffin’s contents.
“While the remains inside the Mer-Neith-it-es coffin were indeed mixed, the scanner detected two mummified ankles, feet and toes, consistent with a single person,” Fraser wrote in the university magazine. “The fused ends of some of the bones suggest the person was at least 30 years old.”
Fraser said that the findings meant that it could be the original mummy of the Egyptian priestess Mer-Neith-it-es.
Archaeologists then “painstakingly” sifted through debris until they found the feet and ankles of the mummy.
“That should be the toes,” Connie Lord, an Egyptologist at the University of Sydney, pointed out to an excited Fraser on camera. She laughed. “There could even be toenails, which would be really thrilling. It’s weird to want that, but that’s what I want. Toenails are fantastic for radiocarbon dating.”
Fraser said that work was still underway to learn more about the coffin and its contents, along with three other mummies from the Nicholson Museum’s collection.
“All of these bits of information are starting to tally with what we would expect if that person was Mer-Neith-it-es herself. We’re never going to get the smoking gun. We’re never going to get a written bit of papyrus saying, ‘My name is Mer-Neith-it-es.’ But by putting together this sort of picture, we can start to refine down the possibilities.”
The university is also constructing a new museum, the Chau Chak Wing Museum, which will have a special room that is devoted to mummies and Egyptology and will likely feature the Mer-Neith-it-es coffin.
- wn.com