The gaping face of an ancient Egyptian mummy may be the result of a death so painful that her face was frozen in a scream. Her name is unknown, but the grim expression on her face is so striking that she has been dubbed the “Screaming Woman” mummy. Despite the emotion this face evokes, researchers had previously attributed it to the relatively benign cause of shoddy mummification. But a new study suggests that’s not the case.
Radiologist Sahar Salim of Cairo University and anthropologist Samia El-Merghani of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities conducted a new study on the ancient corpse. What were their results? The funeral was magnificent, so magnificent that it could hardly have been performed by careless professionals.
“He was mummified using expensive imported embalming materials,” Salim explains. “This contradicts the mummy’s well-preserved appearance, as well as the traditional view that failure to remove the internal organs meant the mummification was bad.”
The Screaming Woman was buried three thousand years ago in the tomb of Semnut, the royal architect of the 18th Dynasty under Queen Hatshepsut. Semnut was to be buried with great honor, and a separate room for her mother and other unnamed relatives was discovered in her tomb in 1935.
The woman was one of these other relatives, and although her name was not given, her burial was not sumptuous: she was buried in a wooden coffin with two silver and gold rings decorated with carved jasper scarabs and a braided wig on her head.
Wanting to learn more about the woman and how she died, Salim and El-Merghani conducted the most detailed examination of her remains to date, carefully visualizing her body using CT scans to examine it in three-dimensional detail and perform a virtual autopsy.
They also subjected the samples to a series of highly detailed analysis techniques, including scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis, to identify the substances and compounds used in mummification.
After examining her body, researchers were able to determine that the woman was short, just 1.54 meters tall, just over 1.5 meters. She died at around 48 years old and suffered from arthritis. She was also missing several teeth, which was not surprising and likely occurred during her lifetime, as her jawbone showed signs of healing after the teeth were extracted.
The cause of death was not determined, but the body contained a surprise: the brain, diaphragm, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and intestines were all still intact. This is not completely unheard of, but it is rare. In most eras, including the era in which the Screaming Woman lived and died, it was common practice to remove most organs during mummification.
But her burial had other minor differences from the norm. For example, her hands were resting on her pelvis, as was the case with royal women; her left hand was not on her chest, but her right hand was below it. And of course there were embalming materials. Her body was embalmed with juniper and frankincense, which must have been imported from Africa and Arabia respectively.
Her natural hair, under the wig woven from palm fibers, was dyed with juniper and henna. The wig itself was decorated with quartz, magnetite and albite crystals. The purpose of this was to stiffen the braided fibers and dye them black so that they resemble real hair.
All of this suggests that her burial was carried out with care, so Salim and El-Merghani believe that the claim that the Screaming Woman’s mouth was opened in the grave because the executioners failed to properly seal the grave does not stand up to any criticism.
So what happened? In rare cases, a dying person’s muscles can freeze and lock into place, and remain in this state until the corpse spell. This is called a cadaveric spasm, and is said to be more severe than cadaveric wasting and not as easy to treat. It is usually reported in cases where a person dies from unusually extreme discomfort.
It is also a very controversial phenomenon, as many scientists deny its existence. Others claim that it does happen, but only in very rare cases. However, this controversial phenomenon could explain the Screaming Woman face.
“The screaming facial expression of the mummy in this study can be read as a cadaveric spasm, meaning that the woman died screaming in pain or agony,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“The embalmers likely mummified the woman’s compressed body before it could decompose or slacken, so that the position of her open mouth was preserved after death. It’s also possible that shortened muscles prevented the embalmers from closing their mouths.”
We will probably never know the woman’s true fate or how she died. But at least examining her remains and those of others like her gives us a strange glimpse into humanity’s past and the traditions that shaped their journey from a life lived so many years ago. The paper was published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
Source: Port Altele
