Further investigation revealed that a naturally occurring salt mixture found in abundance at the Wadi Natrun, an area north-west of modern Cairo, was an excellent desiccant. If a body was packed in natron, an amalgam of sodium chloride, hydrated sodium carbonate, sodium sulphate and sodium bicarbonate, the compound extracted the fluids from the corpse, leaving it dry, yet supple, with all the extremities reasonably flexible. The Ancient Egyptians called this compound netjry or ‘divine salt’.
Once the use of natron became widespread, the process of chemical preservation became a common practice, although techniques differed slightly throughout the historic period. The methods involved were transmitted from father to son for generations as the black art wasn’t a subject worthy of recording in any permanent fashion. The Egyptians required their bodies be preserved but didn’t want to know any of the grisly details. Dr. Hussein could sympathise with that. Modern manuals on body preservation would never feature on any Book of the Month Club ‘must read’ list and, in common with most societies, those who handle the dead are viewed with some wariness.
The mummification process was complex. Immediately after death, the body was delivered to the embalmers as decomposition begins rapidly in hot climates. The work was undertaken near or in the religious temples as embalmers practiced their dismal trade at the behest of the priesthood. The corpse was placed on a stone table, stripped of garments and washed. An incision was made, usually in the left side of the abdomen from the top of the pelvic arch to the base of the lowest rib and the viscera extracted. The liver, kidneys, lungs and stomach were put aside for purging and natron preservation. Later, each organ was wrapped in fine linen and placed in stone vessels, now called canopic vases. The other organs were discarded with the exception of the heart, as the Egyptians believed it to be the seat of intellect, reason and emotion. As it embodied an individual’s personality, it was deemed essential to retain the heart within the body.
By the Eighteenth Dynasty, the brain was usually removed by breaking through the ethmoid bones behind the nose and the cranial vault penetrated. The brain and the meninges were withdrawn with gruesome metal tools designed to facilitate the extraction. A solution of heated resins was then poured into the empty skull case. The abdominal cavity was flushed with palm wine, the eviscerated body placed on an angled stone table, the corpse posed, its thorax and abdomen packed with natron and the body covered with divine salt. The arms could be crossed over the chest, laid alongside the trunk or the hands placed over the genital area. The Ramesside Pharaohs had their arms crossed over their chests with the hands placed flat on their shoulders, replicating the way they held the crook and flail in life. After a period of between fifty to seventy days, the body had given up its moisture and the soft tissues were fully desiccated.
Next, steps were taken to restore the body to a semblance of its original form. The abdomen was padded out to re-establish its shape and the incision hidden under wax or fine gold foil. Openings such as the anus, vagina, ears and nose were plugged with beeswax or resin soaked linen. Throughout the New Kingdom era and early into the next dynasties, it was not uncommon for the corpse to have its face painted in either yellow for women or red for men. False eyes of stone, small onions or glass might be added. Hair extensions, made of human hair or string, were commonly employed to add volume. Occasionally, the cheeks were packed out with linen pads though several mummies of the period have their cheeks split open due to the over generous use of stuffing.
Fingers, toes and the male genitals might be individually wrapped before the body was bound in linen strips carefully wound around it to perpetuate the human form. Amulets were placed within the bandaging and religious texts sometimes written on the linen. The mummy was then encoffined. Depending on custom or wealth, the number of coffins varied and, if more than one, these were fitted tightly together to form a nest of caskets. It was not unusual for a non-royal mummy to have placed on it, a painted face mask of stiffened linen. Royal face masks were of inlaid gold or silver with the finest example, the acclaimed golden mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, demonstrating exceptional craftsmanship.
Fragrant oils and viscous resins were poured over the mummy or painted onto the wrappings before the coffin was sealed. The resins, extracted from cypress or juniper trees, had antiseptic properties and imparted a fragrance to the body. It was also used to mask the smell resulting from an inadequate embalming that had not fully arrested the process of decomposition. Tutankhamen’s remains evidence an overly generous use of resin; so freely had it been used, it carbonised linen wrappings, glued the body into its coffin and the fabled mask and caused the disintegration of the corpse. Howard Carter worked for days in a grisly and largely unsuccessful attempt to separate the body from its housing.
Within the tomb the body, ensconced in its coffins, was placed in a stone sarcophagus if the occupant was of high rank or wealthy enough to afford this last funerary embellishment. If the deceased could not afford a stone casket, then one of wood was used though the style and shape of sarcophagi varied widely throughout the entire Pharaonic period.
So successful was the process, Hussein had at his disposal hundreds of mummies, a not surprising number as body preservation was practiced for almost three thousand years. There was not a major museum in the world that did not possess at least one mummy on exhibition, with others held in storage. The best known royal remains are those of the New Kingdom rulers between the years 1550 to 1070 BC, as this was the high water mark of the embalmer’s skills.
It is only with luck, some ancient good management and, perhaps, an attack of conscience that any of the royal mummies of the New Kingdom survive. The last pharaohs of the Ramesside line ruled from the then fabulous Delta city of Pi-Ramess, as Thebes was long forsaken as a city under strict obedience to royal edict. Infrequent royal visits were restricted to religious festivals as the power and extent of pharaonic rule lessened and even though all but the last Ramesside king were buried in the Valley, the Twentieth Dynasty was on its last legs. The temple priests gradually usurped effective power in Upper Egypt and, during the reign of Ramesses XI, they became involved in a territorial dispute with the viceroy of Nubia in the south. In an attempt to resolve the dispute, the pharaoh despatched a general, who found himself in need of funds to mount his campaign. He joined, as an apparent co-conspirator with Amenhotep, High Priest of Amun, in an act of sacrilege unprecedented in Egyptian history.
Amenhotep ordered the looting of the tombs of the kings, queens and nobles in all the Theban necropolises. Every tomb was opened, stripped of anything of value and pillaged, regardless of the occupant’s rank. Whilst there had been casual grave robbery in the past, the wholesale desecration, documented in fragments of papyrus and determined from archaeological evidence, was systematic with the high priest’s minions assiduously exploring the cemeteries for tombs.
The subsequent history of the plunder and the disposition of mummies is unclear. Under the next high priests, Herihor and Pinudjem I, looting continued, although the pillage was then described as a ‘restoration’ of the burial sites. Pinudjem, who nominated himself co-regent with the king, may have commanded the establishment of the first cache of royal remains in the tomb of Horemheb, and there are indications that other royal mummies were collected and transferred to other caches.
In the reign of Pharaoh Siamun, the new Twenty-First dynasty ruler, bodies in a fourth cache established in the tomb of Seti I were moved to Queen Inhapi’s tomb. Some forty years further on, for reasons not as yet known but possibly driven by conscience stricken piety, the mummies were collected from there and other minor caches and moved to the tomb of Pinudjem II (DB320), where they lay undisturbed until discovered in 1881. The second cache was established in KV35. There may be a third collection as the mummies of several New Kingdom kings have not been positively identified or recovered. The fate of the remains of queens, royal children and nobles is unknown.
What confronted Gaston Maspero, Director of the Antiquities Se
rvice, after the discovery of the cache in DB320, was an assemblage of 44 mummies, many pharaonic, conjoined with members of Pinudjem II’s family and lesser nobility. Victor Loret uncovered the second cache of seventeen mummies in Amenhotep II’s tomb in 1898.
The bodies were pieces in an enormously complex jigsaw puzzle. The science of archaeology in the late 1880’s was in its infancy and Egyptologists like Maspero and Loret were principally interested in finding artefacts rather than in information gathering. Both men were dazzled by the discoveries as the bodies of almost every notable New Kingdom Pharaoh lay beneath their hands in an awesome roll call of the dead. Most of the mummies had been damaged by robbers tearing apart the linen bindings and bodies in search of amulets and heart scarabs. Heads, arms, feet and appendages had been broken off corpses, funerary masks were torn away and coffins stripped of their gold foil decorations. Some mummies were hastily re-wrapped after their initial desecration and several bodies were placed in coffins originally belonging to others, before being secreted in the caches.
Loret wrote, described his find in these words. ‘The coffins and the mummies were a uniform grey colour. I leaned over the nearest coffin and blew on it so as to read the name. The grey tint was a layer of dust which flew away and allowed me to read the nomen and praenomen of Ramesses 1V. I blew away the dust of a second coffin and a cartouche revealed itself, illegible in an instant, painted in matte black on a shiny black ground. I went over to the others coffins – everywhere cartouches!’ Emile Brugsch, who cleared DB320 for Maspero, wrote in terms of equal amazement. ‘Collecting my senses I made the best examination I could of them by my torch and saw at once that they contained mummies of royal personages of both sexes and yet that was not all. Plunging ahead I came to the end chamber and there standing against the walls or lying on the floor I found even a greater number of mummy cases of stupendous size and weight. Their gold coverings and polished surfaces so plainly reflected my own excited visage that it seemed as though I was looking into the faces of my own ancestors.’
To modern archaeologists, the identification and interpretation of the remains in these caches, would demand years of specialised work. Under Maspero’s fervid hand, the fate of the mummies degenerated into theatre of the most dramatic and macabre kind. Scissors and knives hacked through the wrappings, identifying inscriptions drawn in ink on the linen wrappings were disregarded, cut through and lost forever. There exists a photograph of Tuthmosis III’s mummy after it had been unwrapped by Maspero. John Romer, in his famous book on the Valley of the Kings, used the words ‘The bandaging … lay around the king like the results of a gruesome explosion’.
Maspero made mummy unwrappings a public spectacle, with many stripped of their windings in the presence of the ruler of Egypt, Khedive Tewfik, foreign visitors and local officials. He deprived Ramesses II of his funerary cloth in less than a quarter of an hour and then remarked, looking down on the body, ‘His conduct at Qadesh suggests a good trooper, but a dull general, and his mummy does nothing to cause a revision of the judgement’.
Ramesses corpse was hastily re-wrapped, moved to Cairo and stripped a second time. There, the king’s desiccated, withered arm moved as a result of the exposure to the more humid climate in a manner that frightened the daylights out of his examiners. Later, his remains were found to have become a haven for lice and given a mercury bath to rid it of the pests. In 1976, the mummy was air freighted to Paris for conservation and, on examination, it was again found infested with parasites and the body had to be irradiated before restoration could take place. His soul must have writhed in anguish.
The mummies found at KV35 and DB320 were ultimately housed in the Cairo Museum where they remain today. Just after a cache arrived at the Museum, its new French Director, Eugene Lefebure wrote a moving epitaph. ‘A mummy, that of Amenophis 1, whose yellow mask with enamelled eyes moulded to this adolescent face seemed, weary of his sleep to be awakened with a smile, in his bed of flowers. This graceful tableau sums up the basic impression of the work at Deir el Bahari. (the site of DB320) Apart from some precious historical documents of the 21st Dynasty and some prayers on linen that were chanced to be found with the 18th Dynasty mummies, there is perhaps no material to sustain long research, nor will there be great conclusions. The interest in the discovery lies elsewhere. It is in this piece of theatre the dramatic and sudden bringing to light of the assembly of kings which brings close to us that which we thought remote. It is the Egyptian visions of death that we see in this poetic entourage. Framed again for our eyes are the most fleeting relics of life, from the fly swish of Tuthmosis found in his coffin, to the smile of Amenophis’
Hussein thought long on Lefebure’s remarks. No, Lefebure, you were wrong. There are great conclusions to be made and we have enough material to initiate many years of research. My task is to remove the confusion created through the slipshod unwrapping of mummies by Maspero and those who followed. I have a new laboratory, the world of science at my finger tips and I accept the responsibility for the final, definitive identification of the kings and queens whose bodies were dumped so ignominiously in jumbled caches and later so ill-treated.
Selected mummies in the Cairo Museum and elsewhere had been further examined since their original discoveries. In 1996, an extensive radiographic study of the royal mummies found in KV35 and DB320 was initiated and, at various times, mummies had been sent out for CAT scans. The advent of MRI tomography made a more intimate examination of remains possible. Laboratory staff investigating the causes of the death of the kings and queens used MRI scans, combined with organic tissues analysis, to identify a range of ailments. Skin diseases, circulatory problems, baldness, arthritis, scoliosis, obesity, arteriosclerosis, smallpox, hernias and poor dentition were but a few of the afflictions suffered by the pharaohs and nobility of the New Kingdom. Hussein reflected that in some areas, nothing much changes in human history.
However, the greatest mystery remained unresolved - the correct identification of the mummies and their genealogical relationships. Solving this puzzle would be a long and exacting process using a new weapon in his scientific arsenal, DNA analysis, and whilst Egypt did not have the necessary equipment or expertise, he knew who did and this took him to the dinner table of Professor Schadlich in London and the genesis of his quest.
Chapter 20 – WHO’S WHO IN THE ROYAL ZOO
Egypt – Present Day
Professor Schadlich and Dr. Hussein concluded an interim agreement for the DNA analysis of the New Kingdom royal collection. Detailed protocols would be drawn up but Omar and his technicians started work as soon as he returned to Cairo. Hussein was convinced this technology would allow him to create a more accurate genealogy of the royal families and provide a clearer identification of the bodies recovered from the Theban cemetery caches. The survey might also unravel the relationships of the Twenty-First Dynasty bodies found in DB320. He had one definite key, one of the few to be identified beyond doubt. Tutankhamen’s somewhat mangled body was still in situ in his tomb (KV62). Apart from this one irrefutable piece of evidence, he also sought to untangle one consequence of the damage caused by robbers, over enthusiastic excavators and non-professional scientific examination. There were several body parts he hoped could be identified and re-united with their hosts.
Dr. Hussein’s weapon of choice, DNA analysis, was the most precise tool available to forensic science. The task was formidable, as the royal collection comprised sixty four mummies, a number he could augment with remains from the Valley of the Queens and the other Theban cemeteries relevant to the dynasties under evaluation.
After concluding meetings with her colleagues about the assignment, Marie-Therese deciding she was entitled to a break from the rigours of the Parisian winter and free to accept Dr. Hussein’s invitation to fly to Egypt to conclude the protocol and view the mummies where they lay. She also gave rein to her feelings about Omar and came to the conclusion he excited her. A vacation would also forestall a final confrontation with he
r husband over his long standing affair, a confrontation Marie-Therese believed would finish their marriage. On the short flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Cairo, she assembled her thoughts about how the Institute’s technology could best be utilised in this very novel application.
Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is the basic molecular structure of organic life. All living creatures are composed of immense assemblies of microscopic cells, which combine to create totally unique individual forms of animate life. Each cell has a nucleus within which are sets of chromosomes and, as cells form an organism’s fundamental anatomy, replicas of it’s unique DNA will be found throughout the specific life form. A chromosome is a long, thread like molecule presenting the familiar double helix pattern, with two strands wound firmly around each other. Each strand consists of four bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T).
What makes DNA the definitive tool for relationship identification is that it is inherited from the moment of conception with elements of both parent’s DNA transmitted to their off-spring.
Hence DNA analysis has become the most important tool in a wide range of scientific activities. The technology is employed to examine the transmission of inherited diseases, evolution of species, how an organism functions, how genes can be modified to overcome genetic defects or impart new properties to an organism. It is used to verify the identity of parties involved in crimes, to test paternity, to identify victims of disasters such as aircraft crashes, fires and acts of genocide where visual identification was no longer possible. An analysis would establish bloodlines within royal families, determine relationships between members of groups and throw some light on the diseases that might have been an inherited factor within such groups and transmitted through subsequent generations.
The Golden Falcon Page 27