I traveled to the Cairo airport to meet the arriving passengers, and to my amazement the featured scholar was none other than T. G. H. “Harry” James, the Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum. Less than two months prior, I had appeared in London at his venerable department, a letter of introduction in hand from a mutual friend. Harry had graciously come out to meet me and wished me the best of luck with my studies. I left the museum in total awe and grateful for my brief audience with him. The prospect of spending more time with him was thrilling.
In his characteristic sense of wry humor, Harry greeted the cruise passengers as they boarded a bus, soliciting suitcases as he pretended to be the baggage handler. When his bluff was called, he finally announced, “I am Harry James!” Then, pointing to me, “And this is my acolyte.” I didn’t mind at all. I was able to spend ten days with this marvelous gentleman, quizzing him for a wealth of insights on Egyptological matters and visiting such wonderful places as the Wadi Rum and Petra in Jordan and sites in the eastern desert of Egypt. Many of the passengers, too, were quite fascinating, including Countess Tauni de Lesseps, the granddaughter of the man who built the Suez Canal, and I would have readily signed up for more, but it was time to move on. I was once again pleased to return home and find Sherry relieved that I’d been off on an archaeological adventure rather than something more precarious in the mountains.
DESPITE MY ENTHUSIASM and growing experience, I wasn’t qualified to direct my own archaeological expedition in Egypt at this stage in my career. A Ph.D. and a formal affiliation with an appropriate institution such as a museum or university are among the criteria, and I had a good ways to go before I would achieve either. Apart from continuing my graduate-school education, which I wasn’t interested in pursuing for a while, there were other things I could do to keep myself well involved in archaeology, including fieldwork and the constant study of subjects that somehow piqued my interest or just came my way.
ONE DAY WHILE READING the newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, I learned that there was a mummy being examined with modern medical technology by a local physician named Ray Lyle. I immediately called Ray to see if I could get a piece of the action. I was welcomed aboard Lyle’s team as a “consultant,” since I was one of only a few in the Pacific Northwest with a background in ancient Egypt, and it was a fascinating experience. The mummy and its accompanying coffins were examined every which way. While physicians scrutinized his physical characteristics, I helped organize and investigate some of the contextual information regarding his identity and place in time.
The mummy was acquired in Egypt in 1891 by a Tacoma businessman named Allen Mason. Although it might seem strange today, back in the nineteenth century, tourists could buy mummies and coffins, or the two together, and bring them home as exotic souvenirs. Antiquities dealing was big business, and there was a seemingly endless supply of dead ancient Egyptians to satisfy the customers. As a result there are mummies and pieces thereof—hands, heads, et cetera—to be found in museums, in antiques and curio shops, and even in private homes all over Europe and North America. When you consider that mummification in Egypt was practiced for perhaps three millennia, there were plenty of dead folk whose bodies were embalmed, wrapped, coffined, and interred.
The ancient Egyptians were interested in preserving the actual body because it served as a physical home for a manifestation of the soul known as the ka. Not everyone, though, got the same treatment. The average Egyptian laborer was probably wrapped in a mat with a few personal items for the afterlife and buried in a pit. But those who could afford it could have their body prepared by experts to survive the ages in a state that more or less resembled them in life. There are very few Egyptian texts that describe the process of mummification, but the Greek historian Herodotus provides a few insights, indicating that there were three different methods of preparation. His description of the deluxe procedure is morbidly fascinating:
They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they make a cut along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded aromatics. After this they fill the cavity with the purest bruised myrrh, with cassia, and every other sort of spicery except frankincense, and sew up the opening. Then the body is placed in natron for seventy days, and covered entirely over. After the expiration of that space of time, which must not be exceeded, the body is washed, and wrapped round, from head to foot, with bandages of fine linen cloth, smeared over with gum, which is used generally by the Egyptians in the place of glue, and in this state it is given back to the relations, who enclose it in a wooden case which they have had made for the purpose.
Natron is a kind of salt found naturally in the desert and was used even in the cheapest methods to essentially dry out the body, leaving flesh and bones intact. The difference in quality is easily noted. Some of the more economical treatments resemble bones covered with beef jerky, while some of the royal mummies are astoundingly well preserved. The face of the New Kingdom pharaoh, Seti I, for example, resembles a peacefully sleeping man, even though he’s been “napping” for over three thousand years now. His son, the great warrior pharaoh Rameses II, also retains a regal composure—and a head of curly reddish hair.
Apart from humans, the Egyptians also mummified millions of animals considered sacred due to their associations with deities, including crocodiles, certain species of fish and birds, baboons, and the ever-popular cat. Beneath the ancient cemetery of Sakkara, there are mazes of catacombs containing many thousands of mummified ibis birds, each housed in its own ceramic container. At the same site, there are huge subterranean tunnels (resembling subway tunnels) containing numerous mammoth stone sarcophagi that once held the preserved bodies of sacred bulls.
There were plenty of mummies to go around. Mark Twain, who visited in Egypt in 1867, noted in The Innocents Abroad, in his own humorous way, that they were indeed prolific:
I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway—I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, “D——n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King;”*
Public or private unwrappings of exported mummies became a popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century. Wrappings were cut and a body was exposed for the awe and wonderment of the audience. But it wasn’t all spectacle. The dissections were often conducted by physicians or those with an interest in anatomy and the phenomenon of mummification. With the advent of modern technology, especially CT scanning, mummies can be examined in great detail without disturbing their often intricate wrappings.
The study of mummies has become a passion for a number of scholars, especially during the last few decades. In 1994 a couple of researchers, Egyptologist Dr. Bob Brier along with a medical colleague Dr. Ron Wade, conducted what was likely the first authentic Egyptian mummification in two millennia. With the procedures outlined by Herodotus and other details derived from the study of ancient specimens, a body “donated to science” was prepared in the traditional fashion and then covered in natron. The experiment provided a lot of insight and, when periodically checked, the corpse’s long-term preservation appears likely.
I recall the first time I ever saw a mummy. It was on display in a small glass case in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I was there to see the dinosaurs, but what young boy couldn’t resist taking a look at such a spooky side attraction? His name was Pu, and he lived during the time the Greeks ruled Egypt, about two thousand years ago. He, too, had been purchased in Egypt many decades ago and brought to America.
Pu’s face and toes were exposed, and he wasn�
��t a particularly pretty sight. In fact, his face looked more like a skull than a preserved visage, and it gave me plenty to talk about. My other youthful encounters with the Egyptian dead were from the black-and-white images on the television screen, such as Boris Karloff as the infamous Imhotep returned to life to claim his ancient love in the classic Universal Pictures horror film The Mummy. It both frightened and intrigued me. The rational side of me knew it could never happen, but the notion of reanimated mummies was enough to make me want to sleep with the lights on.
The Tacoma mummy was a surprise to me. I would never have guessed that such an interesting thing was lying about just a few miles from where I lived. What’s more, buying a mummy in nineteenth-century Egypt was one thing, but what do you do with it once you return home? Allen Mason kept it at home for a while, then moved it to his downtown office, and finally, after nearly twenty years, donated it to what is now the Washington State Historical Society, a strange item indeed to be found among all manner of items relating to that state’s history, including old wagons and political posters. Despite its irrelevance, this white elephant, so to speak, remained a popular attraction at the society’s museum. In 1959 it was lent to the University of Puget Sound, where it served as a kind of curious teaching and research novelty. In 1983 it was returned to the historical society’s museum, where it was placed in storage. When Dr. Lyle, a local amateur Egyptologist, learned of the mummy, he put his skills as an orthopedic surgeon to work. The mummy was taken to a local hospital, X-rayed, and run through a CT scanner. Historically speaking, this was one of the earliest mummy CT scans performed in the United States, a procedure that has become increasingly common in such studies.
After joining Lyle’s team, I visited the museum to get my first look. The mummy lay in one of his two coffins, still partially wrapped with his head and forearms exposed. His skin was thin and black, and his eye sockets were sunken. I had seen worse. I had once been taken to an abandoned tomb in Egypt where the local villagers disposed of the mummies they would occasionally find. This tomb had a low chamber whose walls were lined with limbless torsos with the heads still attached; another room was filled with a random assortment of arms, legs, and other body parts. It was a horrific sight that was both repulsive and riveting. I didn’t stay long, but the memory has certainly persisted.
Back in Tacoma, Ray Lyle’s examination revealed some basic facts. The mummy was definitely an adult male who’d died between the ages of twenty-five and forty. In life he stood about five feet three inches tall, and his feet were remarkably small. He’d probably wear a size four or five in a modern man’s shoe size. Cause of death? Undetermined.
The body itself lay within a coffin more or less in the shape of a human body, which in turn fit inside another of rectangular shape in the form of a shrine. A botanist friend of mine took some tiny samples from these items and determined that their material of manufacture was primarily wood from the acacia tree. Texts on the coffins indicated that the mummy’s name was Ankhwennefer and came from the town of Ipu, which is known today as Akhmim. Ipu was a major center for the worship of a fertility god named Min. Ankhwennefer appears to have served as “second prophet,” a very high-ranking priest in Min’s temple. He lived around the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, approximately 700 B.C. according to the radiocarbon date of his wrappings. Egypt was in something of a decline at the time, being ruled by Nubians, longtime rivals of the Egyptians who exploited political disunity by sending forces in from the south.
Ankhwennefer is currently being reexamined by a project studying as many of the mummies from Akhmim as can be located (the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium). Not surprisingly, given the comings and goings of those nineteenth-century tourists who bought them, they’re scattered far and wide. Despite logistical difficulties, studying mummies originating from a single ancient location can provide some interesting comparative information regarding medical practices and religious ideology of the time. Furthermore, the CT-scanning technology is vastly more sophisticated than during our 1985 inspection, and it will likely reveal far more than the basic facts that we were able to determine around twenty-five years ago.
If Ankhwennefer could awake from his extended slumber, he’d have one heck of a surprise. He has gone from once serving the temple of Min and being afforded a proper burial to having his coffin unearthed and his body sold as a tourist commodity, only to be relocated to a history museum’s storeroom in a cool, forested part of the world he never knew existed. What a long, strange trip it was for him, and what an interesting learning experience for me.
ANOTHER DEVELOPING INTEREST of mine was the documentation of ancient sites. In the case of Egypt, the detailed survey and description of ancient monuments remains an important priority, as many are suffering rapid decay due to a variety of factors, both human and natural. Tourism, agricultural and residential expansion, and natural erosion all take their toll, and the need to document, if not preserve, these precious remnants of the past is vital. Ideally, there will at least be as detailed a record as possible of what once existed, whether the actual monuments withstand the abuses of time or not.
Enter the epigraphers. Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions and the art of recording them. There are several methods. At its simplest, a skillful artist sketches an inscription or copies a painted wall with pencil, ink, or watercolors. Howard Carter began his Egyptological career doing just that, first coming to Egypt at age seventeen to document ancient inscriptions and paintings, and his work was some of the best of this sort ever produced. Other epigraphic techniques include physically tracing inscriptions or paintings onto thin paper or clear plastic sheets. While typically involving direct contact with a decorated wall, these are much less intrusive than some of the older methods, which involved making molds with plaster or wet paper.
Within a few years of the invention of photography, Egypt became a popular focus for the new technology. Its ancient and contemporary cultures provide plenty of alluring images, but photography could also be applied to epigraphy. Both recording by hand and photography, though, have their drawbacks. While sketching and painting can be compromised by the subjectivity of the artist, the so-called objective details of a photograph can be subdued by such factors as shadows and the inclusion of irrelevant features. The most effective approach is to use both.
The University of Chicago is at the cutting edge of documentation, and its Epigraphic Survey has been busy in Egypt for many decades. With money contributed by John D. Rockefeller, the facility in Luxor known as Chicago House was established in 1924 and remains active during the six cooler months of the year. Its stated goal is “to produce photographs and precise line drawings of the inscriptions and relief scenes on major temples and tombs at Luxor for publication.”
During my first trip to Egypt, I met a scholar who once worked at Chicago House and was willing to explain their method of documentation. A large-format black-and-white photograph is taken of, say, an inscribed temple wall. The image is developed into a print, and an artist then traces with ink over the salient hieroglyphs or other decoration displayed in the photograph. It is taken back to the wall and any missing or unclear details are filled in and refined. Eventually the photographic image is bleached out, leaving only a line image that is then corrected, then corrected again if necessary, until a consensus of accuracy is reached by the Egyptologists. This sometimes involves standing on very tall ladders perched against gigantic stone columns and plenty of time in the heat. Precise artistic rules are used, and the end result is an incredibly accurate facsimile that becomes part of a published volume that will serve as a permanent record, even if, sadly, the original monument should crumble to dust. It is a long, exacting, and expensive procedure. People sometimes joke that the process of documentation has taken much longer than it took the Egyptians themselves to actually build and decorate some of these temples. The careful work nonetheless is certainly worth the effort.
Although I wasn’t particularly in a position to
work within the lofty world of Chicago House, my interest in epigraphy brought me to a place relatively closer and actually much more familiar to me: Hawaii. My parents first took me there when I was nine years old, and I loved everything about it. We were frequent visitors, and while it wasn’t exactly Egypt, I found its culture, environment, and archaeology likewise captivating, and I was actually able to apply some of my interests in epigraphy to ancient sites found on these beautiful tropical islands.
When Captain Cook encountered the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, the native population had no writing system. They were certainly sophisticated in numerous ways and maintained a wealth of oral traditions that had been memorized and recited for generations, but there was no Hawaiian script until after the first American missionaries arrived in 1820. However, there are many ways to communicate, including artistic expression, and what really interested me were petroglyphs: symbols and other drawings scratched, incised, or pecked into stone surfaces and often found in very remote or abandoned places. In the Hawaiian language, they are known as ki‘i pohaku—“images in stone”—and in many ways they are a mystery that is difficult to decipher.
Being exposed to the elements in a hot, rainy climate, the petroglyphs, like the monuments of Egypt, are subject to natural deterioration. Worse yet, nonnative species such as kiawe, a tree related to mesquite, have taken root in many coastal areas and thrive like weeds, their strong-growing trunks and roots shattering the lava with the potential of decimating irreplaceable ancient records. In addition, the wild descendants of animals such as goats and donkeys that are not native to the islands roam the lava beds consuming the tasty leaves and sweet seed pods of the kiawe only to disperse and deposit seeds in tiny cracks with their dung and further the destruction.
Beneath the Sands of Egypt Page 8