Unknown Man E: “The Screaming Mummy”

Did an Egyptian prince conspire to murder his own father? And could a mysterious mummy, its mouth stretched wide in an eternal, silent scream, be all that remains of him?

Perhaps the most unsettling figure in the assassination plot of Ramesses III known as the “Harem Conspiracy” is the young man commonly called the Screaming Mummy. Discovered amongst the royal mummies concealed at Deir el-Bahari in 1881, he was later designated Unknown Man E, having been interred in a plain, undecorated coffin that provided no inscription identifying its occupant.

When Gaston Maspero examined the remains in 1886, he encountered a disturbing sight: the body of a young man with his mouth wide open, his head thrown backwards and his face seemingly contorted in anguish. Unlike the carefully embalmed pharaohs around him, this individual had been prepared in a remarkably irregular manner. His brain and internal organs remained in place, his body had been covered in animal hide, and early examinations described his hands and feet as bound.

Here was a man apparently denied the customary splendour of royal burial, yet mysteriously preserved amongst Egypt’s kings and queens.

It was this extraordinary appearance that encouraged early scholars to imagine a dreadful death. Maspero believed the mummy’s expression suggested poisoning, while the physician Daniel Fouquet interpreted the position of the body as evidence of a final, agonising convulsion. Their conclusions, however, depended largely upon the appearance of the remains rather than demonstrable forensic injuries.

The anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith subsequently challenged such interpretations, observing that a corpse might assume a similar position irrespective of the cause of death. Modern specialists likewise caution that an open mouth is not evidence of a final scream. The jaw may relax after death, while dehydration and the embalming process can preserve an expression that bears little resemblance to the individual’s actual final moments. The Screaming Mummy‘s face is certainly haunting, but it does not establish that he died in agony.

Unknown Man E as Pentawere

The possible identification of Unknown Man E as Pentawere nevertheless offers a compelling historical explanation for his unusual burial. According to the Judicial Papyrus of Turin, the prince was found guilty of conspiring with his mother and was subsequently permitted, or compelled, to take his own life.

The manner of his death is nowhere specified. Egyptologist Bob Brier, who personally examined Unknown Man E in 2004, considered the disgraced prince a plausible candidate for the unidentified mummy, particularly because of the body’s unconventional treatment and apparent association with the royal family. However, Brier acknowledged that the surviving evidence could not prove the identification.

YouTube: Ramesses III: Murder of a Pharaoh 🗡️🩸

The mysterious mummy possesses no surviving inscription naming Pentawere, and the connection remains an interpretation of archaeological and historical circumstances rather than an established fact.

The peculiar mummification has sometimes been interpreted as a deliberate punishment. Instead of being subjected to the usual removal of internal organs, Unknown Man E appears to have undergone a much simpler preservation process. His body was covered in animal skin, described by early investigators as sheepskin and by the 2012 forensic team as goatskin.

Such materials could carry associations of ritual impurity in certain Egyptian funerary contexts, leading scholars to wonder whether the deceased had been intentionally denied the proper ceremonies intended to secure a blessed afterlife.

If he was indeed Pentawere, this might represent a final expression of his disgrace: a royal son preserved, yet deprived of the full funerary honours ordinarily accorded to his station.

However, the interpretation is not universally certain. Animal hides were not invariably instruments of dishonour, and the precise circumstances surrounding this burial remain unknown.

Execution?

More tantalising still is the possibility that Unknown Man E died by hanging or strangulation. The forensic examination published in 2012 identified unusual folds and compression of the skin around his neck, together with a conspicuously expanded chest cavity.

These observations prompted researchers to consider whether pressure upon the neck might have contributed to his death. If the mummy belonged to Pentawere, such a possibility would seem compatible with the judicial record of his enforced suicide. Yet the researchers themselves emphasised the limits of this interpretation.

There were no definitive skeletal injuries confirming strangulation, while changes associated with decomposition could account for some of the abnormalities.

Consequently, neither hanging nor strangulation can be established as his cause of death. It remains entirely possible that the prince, if correctly identified, died by some other means.

There is something particularly striking in the contrast between the surviving remains of the murdered king and those of the young man believed to have conspired against him. Ramesses III received the traditional care of royal embalmers, who sought to restore even the terrible injuries inflicted upon his body.

Unknown Man E, by comparison, was preserved in an unconventional fashion, without the elaborate preparation expected of a royal prince. Yet both bodies ultimately found their way into the same royal hiding place at Deir el-Bahari, where priests of a later age had gathered the remains of Egypt’s kings and queens to protect them from tomb robbers.

If Unknown Man E is indeed Pentawere, then father and son, divided in life by a conspiracy that ended in murder and disgrace, were brought together again in death. It is a remarkable possibility, although the circumstances of the younger man’s inclusion in the cache remain unexplained.

Conclusion (thus far)

Ultimately, the ancient documents and the physical remains tell two closely related, but not entirely identical, stories. The murder of Ramesses III is supported by unmistakable injuries, and the judicial papyri establish that Pentawere was condemned for his participation in the conspiracy.

What they do not establish is whether the prince personally contributed to his father’s murder, precisely how he took his own life, or whether the mysterious “Screaming Mummy” truly belongs to him.

Queen Tiye (note: not the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III), whose ambitions lay at the heart of the plot, remains more elusive still, her punishment and burial lost to history. What survives is a compelling historical mystery in which forensic science has illuminated the fate of a murdered pharaoh, whilst leaving the final moments of his wife and son tantalisingly beyond our reach.