Unwrapping the working-class mummies
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Jana
Jones with the 30kg microscope she hauled around Egypt.
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The Egyptian working class were mummifying bodies five hundred
years before the practice was introduced to preserve the bodies
of the Pharoahs, according to a Macquarie University analysis of
textiles uncovered in Egypt.New evidence discovered by textile analyst
and Macquarie University PhD candidate, Jana Jones, shows that mummification
was being carried out in an Egyptian working-class cemetery as far
back as 3500 BC, and on the first Pharoahs c.3000 BC - one thousand
years earlier than the previously accepted date for the beginnings
of this practice.
Jones' skills as a textile analyst were employed by the German
Institute of Archaeology in Cairo, where she hauled a 30 kg microscope
around sites at Abydos and Elephantine to take a closer look at
the mummy wrappings discovered there.Her first assignment was at
the First Dynasty royal cemetery at Abydos, around 100km north of
Luxor, where the tombs of three early kings had been pillaged and
burned in antiquity.
Jones explains that the famous nineteenth century English archaeologist,
Sir William Flinders Petrie, had discovered an arm wrapped in linen
hidden in the wall of the tomb of King Djer during an excavation
of the site in the late 1890s.
"Its hiding place had ensured that it escaped the burning of the
tomb and detection for thousands of years," Jones says. "But when
he cut the wrappings open, Petrie found four stunning bracelets
of gold, lapis lazuli and turquoise. So he delivered his finds to
the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo where the bracelets
were placed on display, but the arm and its wrappings were discarded."
The only remaining evidence of the wrappings of this arm were Petrie's
site photograph and his thread count of one of the textiles binding
the arm.
In recent years the German expedition, under the direction of Dr
Günter Dreyer, re-excavated the royal tombs at Abydos and sifted
the spoil heaps left from the early excavations by Petrie. Jones
says that they retrieved more than 100 fragments of textile, many
of which had been exposed to various degrees of burning. During
the 1999/2000 season, she was asked to analyse the specimens with
her microscope.
"To my amazement, I found that the clumps of fabric actually consisted
of up to 100 layers of different qualities of fine linen, very heavily
soaked with resin, consistent with later mummification practices,"
she marvels.
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A
sample of resin-soaked textile from the royal tomb at Abydos
magnified by Jones' microscope at 2:1. Note the fragment of
bone embedded in the centre-left of the sample.
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"Most of the fragments were slightly curved, consistent with having
been wrapped around limbs, or were rolled like plugs or wads to
pad out the body. I also found two pieces with a smooth, concave
interior and tiny fragments of bone and bone residue embedded in
a resinous layer," she adds.
The fabric also appeared to be layered in a certain sequence -
the finer quality linen against the body, and the coarser, looser
weaves on the outside. The resin against the body suggested the
body had been anointed prior to wrapping.
The German team was extremely excited at Jones' analysis, as it
meant that they had the only surviving physical evidence for the
ritual anointing and wrapping of bodies during the First Dynasty
- some 500 years before the first surviving mummies.
Jones' work with the Germans led her to Hierakonpolis, a site 60
km south of Luxor, where she had read about the discovery by British
Museum research curator, Dr Renee Friedman, of three 5,600 year-old
female bodies in the Hierakonpolis working class cemetery.
She explains that Friedman found that only the hands and head were
bandaged on these bodies, a practice thought to be carried out to
ensure the dead could continue activities such as eating in the
afterlife, while the rest of the body was wrapped in a shroud.
No one had undertaken a microscopial analysis of the fabric wrapping
these bodies, so Jones volunteered her services. Travelling five
hours by train, sharing the carriage with chickens, goats and her
30 kg microscope paid off.
"After analysing the padding wrapped around the hands and heads
of the bodies, it was evident that it was made up of layers of bandages
soaked in resin and carefully wrapped like those from the royal
tombs at Abydos some 500 years later," Jones says.
"Astonishingly they were layered in exactly the same sequence -
finer qualities against the skin and coarser fabric on the outside.
In many cases it was possible to distinguish a layer of red-brown
resin applied to the blackened skin before the bodies had been wrapped,"
she adds.
Another exciting development was the discovery of a yellowish layer
in between the skin and the resin layers, which Macquarie University
Biologist Ron Oldfield later identified from photomicrographs, as
a layer of fungal hyphae.
Jones explains that analysis of this fungal hyphae may indicate
the time lapse between death and wrapping of the body, and a joint
research project between Macquarie University's Department of Biological
Sciences and Dr Friedman's team to undertake this analysis is planned.
Interestingly, all this exciting work is additional to, and quite
separate from Jones' PhD research topic which is The textile terminology
of the Ancient Egyptian funerary texts: a lexicographic, iconographic
and archaeological analysis - something she says she will have to
get back to soon, at least when all the excitement dies down.
Jones explains that her interest in the intricacies of textile
analysis began some years ago when she was working in television
costume design. "I was designing the costumes for a Cleopatra soap
commercial and became fascinated with how the Egyptians were able
to pleat their linen so finely so that it fell softly and clung
sexily to the body. Whenever I tried to pleat linen, it just looked
like a sack, so I used polyester for the Cleopatra costume instead,"
she laughs.
But Jones' obsession with cracking the mysteries of the Egyptian
pleat then led her to do a short course in hieroglyphs, and then
her Master of Arts in Egyptology at Macquarie University before
beginning her PhD research.
She still hasn't cracked the pleat mystery, but her work with the
German team and with Friedman has certainly cemented her expertise
as a textile analyst.
"These two discoveries will force Egytologists to reassess their
previous understanding of the development of mummification and change
their concept of Egyptian funerary beliefs and the afterlife. Discoveries
like these, along with new technology, will launch a reassessment
of our understanding of the beginnings of civilisation, pushing
it further back in time," Jones says.
Watch this space for a special Macquarie University News report
on the results of the analysis of the fungal hyphae found in the
fabric wrapping the 5,600 year-old body found at Hierakonpolis.
Story by Kathy Vozella
Photos by Effy Alexakis
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