The Gebelein Man (British Museum. EA32751), also known informally as “Ginger” due to his red hair; is the mummy of a young Egyptian man found in Gebelein (modern Naga el-Gherira, 25 miles south of Thebes), dating from the Late Pre-Dynastic Period, c. 3400 B.C. During the period of Gebelein Man’s life and death, Egyptians were...
Mummy of an adult man, name unknown. The preparation has been carried out with great care and skill by the embalmer, and the rounded and shapely contours of a living body have been skillfully imitated. The features of the face are painted upon the outermost wrappings. The fingers and toes are each wrapped separately; the...
The mummy of Queen Tiye was found within the second side chamber of the tomb of Amenhotep II. Found in 1898 by Victor Loret, it was discovered that Amenhotep II’s tomb had later been used by the Ancient Egyptian priesthood as a storage for many royal mummies spanning both the 18th and 19th Dynasties. Tiye...
The mummy of Queen Henuttawy was found in the Deir el-Bahari Royal Cachette (TT320). She was the wife of Pinedjem I of the 21st Dynasty. The whole body of mummy of Queen Henuttawy was colored in yellow, while the cheeks and lips were painted red to improve her appearance. The head is adorned with an...
A team at the British Museum and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), have led a pioneering study into 2500-year-old ancient Egyptian lizard mummies. The team used an innovative technique called neutron imaging to ‘look’ inside a group of six sealed first millennium BC animal coffins from...
More than 2,000 mummified ram heads and a palatial Old Kingdom structure have been uncovered by archaeologists at the Temple of Ramesses II of Abydos. The finds, located roughly 270 miles (435 kilometers) south of Cairo, come from a period of over 1,000 years, from the 6th Dynasty to the Heroic Age, making some of...
The mummy of Ramesses I had been stolen from the Royal Cachette in Deir el-Bahari (TT320) by the Abu-Rassul family of grave robbers and sold by Turkish vice-consular agent Mustapha Aga Ayat at Luxor to Dr. James Douglas who brought it to North America around 1860. It is currently believed to be that of Ramesses...
Archaeologists have unearthed the first full-color portraits of Egyptian mummies in more than a century. The excavation at Gerzeh archaeological site in Faiyum revealed a huge funerary building, also turned up papyri, pottery, and coffins from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods Egyptian archaeologists completing their 10th season of excavations at Gerzeh, 75 miles southwest of...
This falcon-headed coffin does not contain an actual mummy but a symbolic Osiris mummy stuffed with grains like corn and sand. The falcon head on the coffin and the hieroglyphic text on the painted lid indicate they are associated with the funerary deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. During the mysteries, two statuettes of Osiris were manufactured: one was...
Some ‘hawk’ mummies are the remains of birds who were bred and lived in captivity. Many hawk mummy bundles contain only partial skeletons, or none at all. Most animals, however, may have been seen rather as heralds who entered the Afterlife grateful to the sponsor who paid for their care and feeding and embalming. They...
