Scientists reveal new details about 'screaming' Egyptian mummy's life and death
CTV
Fascinated by the 'screaming woman' who died 3,500 years ago, researchers used CT scans other techniques to understand what might have caused her striking expression.
With her mouth wide open, locked for eternity in what appears to be a scream, an ancient Egyptian woman captured the imagination of archaeologists who discovered her mummified remains in 1935 in a tomb near Luxor.
Still fascinated by the “screaming woman” who died some 3,500 years ago, a different team of scientists recently used CT scans to reveal details about the mummy’s morphology, health conditions and preservation and employed infrared imaging and other advanced techniques to “virtually dissect” the remains and understand what might have caused her striking facial expression.
Their findings, published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, revealed that the woman was 48 years old when she died, based on analysis of a pelvis joint that changes with age. Certain aspects of the process used to mummify her stood out.
Her body was embalmed with frankincense and juniper resin, lavish, expensive substances that would have been traded from afar, said study author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Kasr Al Ainy Hospital at Cairo University, in a statement.
Saleem also found no incisions on the body, which was consistent with the assessment made during the original discovery that the brain, diaphragm, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys and intestines were still present.
The failure to remove internal organs, the study noted, was unusual because the classic method of mummification from that period included the removal of all such organs except the heart.
The researchers found that the anonymous woman stood 1.54 metres, or a little more than 5 feet, tall and suffered from mild arthritis of the spine, with scans revealing bone spurs on some vertebrae that make up the backbone. Several teeth, likely lost before death, were also missing from the woman’s jaw.
