posted https://www.5280.com/revealing-mummies-mysteries/ A Tale of Two Mummies Visit the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to learn how modern technology is unwrapping the secrets, both ancient and modern, of two Egyptian mummies.
January 29, 2018
They may have lived more than two millennia ago, but two women—well, mummies—continue to teach us about Egyptian culture. The nearly 3,000-year-old mummies—the two centerpieces of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s Egyptian Mummies exhibit, which has been a popular fixture at the museum since the early 1990s—used to be known as just the “rich one” and the “poor one,” based on the quality of the linens they were wrapped in. But now, thanks to modern technology, we’re learning that their histories are much more intriguing.
The tests revealed that the two women actually lived 500 years apart,
We now know that the older, “rich” mummy lived about 2,900 years ago, during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, when the practice of mummification was at its peak. As was the norm for that period, her internal organs were removed, wrapped in linens, and returned to the body so that she had what Koons calls “all of her bits and pieces” with her for the afterlife.
Aesthetics seem to have been important during this period; the CT scans revealed that the older mummy has false eyes and hair extensions and that linens soaked in resins were crammed into her throat and mouth to give her a more life-like appearance. She was also buried with jewelry, including what appear to be a limestone heart amulet as well as small wax figures accompanying each organ bundle. “Finding the wax figures was pretty exciting,” says Koons, “because we didn’t have any idea that those were there.”
The younger mummy, by contrast, lived about 2,400 years ago during the Ptolemaic dynasty, the last of ancient Egypt and a time during which mummification was falling out of favor. Like the older mummy, the woman was in her 30s when she died, but her body is less well preserved.
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