Volume 5 (2022)

First page of the paper.

Papers presented at the third international conference of the Hellenic Institute of Egyptology

Why an Egyptian Priestess of the Higher Panopolitan Class deserved such Poor a Mummification?

Maravelia, Alicia; Bontozoglou, Nikolaos; Grigoraki, Argyro; Lazaris, Panagiotis; Pantazis, Ioannis; Kyriazi, Stavroula; Couvaris, Constantinos

Abstract:

In the context of the Athens Mummy Project, jointly performed by the Hellenic Institute of Egyptology, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the Athens Medical Centre, we re-examine the intriguing mummy of Ta-kherd-Min (NAM AIG 3348), a dancing priestess of Min, as well as the inscriptions on her coffin. The fact that she was the daughter of a father belonging to the higher clergy of Min, offspring of a noble family of high stratus in the Panopolitan society of the Ptolemaic Period, and that she herself was a ritual dancer of the city-god, would be per se implying an excellent embalming result for her mummy. However, CT-scanning has uncovered several unexpected and intriguing facts: putrefaction of her body had started long time before mummification begun; her bones were disordered; her cranium was held in place with a palm stick through the foramen magnum; there was a failed excerebration attempt; there were prosthetic additions for the nose and her eyes; &c. We explained these finds, assuming that —following Herodotos [II, 89: 1-2]— her body was given to the embalmers several days after her death, in order to avoid a possible necrophilia mistreatment, as well as by the fact that such post mortem confection and support of the mummified body was common during both the Ptolemaic and the Roman Period. In this paper, we re-discuss the whole matter, re-examining the hieroglyphic inscriptions on her coffin and proposing some new research methods, as well as her face reconstruction that will be performed in the immediate future.

Citation:

Maravelia, A., Bontozoglou, N., Grigoraki, A., Lazaris, P., Pantazis, I., Kyriazi, S., Couvaris, C. 2022. «Why an Egyptian Priestess of the Higher Panopolitan Class deserved such Poor a Mummification?», JHIE 5: 3–14

DOI:

10.5281/zenodo.7754904

Language: en

Submitted on 2022-08-21; accepted on 2022-12-23

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