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The mummy census


kmt_sesh

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21 hours ago, Oniomancer said:

Checking something else to confirm and turned up this list instead: http://www.mummytombs.com/main.museums.html

Some of the entries will no doubt need to be confirmed.

Outstanding, Mr. Onio! This will be quite helpful. Thanks.

I also have some worries about confirmation. Now, I am not able to travel all over the world to see all of these mummies for myself, so I'll need you to do it for me. UM will pick up the check, all expenses paid.

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  • 2 weeks later...
 

Sorry that I dropped off the face of the earth. It occurs to me I may have jumped the gun on this, but I plan on returning to it. I just had surgery a couple of days ago and was concentrating on mostly that as the time neared.

Now surgery is over, and once I'm feeling better I'd like to work on this more. Unfortunately I'm suffering a bit of a low-grade post-op infection so I'm not at my best.

What I'd like to do is build an Excel database and add to it as I learn more information. What I've seen in just this short thread has been very helpful, but I'm probably going to have to use my own museum affiliation to reach out to other museums for information on their Egyptian mummies. I'd like to build the database by country and then by province/state, as well as providing the names of the specific museums. But suggestions are certainly welcomed!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Kmt sesh: You'll have to add a few more mummies to the list.  18th Dynasty tomb found near Luxor, 8 mummies 10 coffins.  Mayor's tomb.  Lots of other goodies.  Here's the link:

http://en.wataninet.com/culture/antiquity_/ancient-tomb-unearthed-in-luxor/19793/

:D

Edited by Khaemwaset
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18 minutes ago, Khaemwaset said:

Kmt sesh: You'll have to add a few more mummies to the list.  18th Dynasty tomb found near Luxor, 8 mummies 10 coffins.  Mayor's tomb.  Lots of other goodies.  Here's the link:

http://en.wataninet.com/culture/antiquity_/ancient-tomb-unearthed-in-luxor/19793/

:D

Yes, an exciting find. I posted a link to it in the Archaeology section of UM. A day without mummies is like a day without sunshine.

I'm actually not including Egypt's collections in my census. They have little accurate idea what they have in their inventories, so I'm just looking at museums outside of Egypt. And who knows how many more mummies are still hiding under the desert sands?

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Yes, a wonderful find.  So many places do not make their mummy inventories fully available, it seems to me; I hope you are able to get inside access to those numbers.

 

history-mummy-tomb-tombs-hieroglyphic-curse-78631929_low.jpg

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19 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Yes, an exciting find. I posted a link to it in the Archaeology section of UM. A day without mummies is like a day without sunshine.

I'm actually not including Egypt's collections in my census. They have little accurate idea what they have in their inventories, so I'm just looking at museums outside of Egypt. And who knows how many more mummies are still hiding under the desert sands?

kmt_sesh pardon my changing the subject for a moment, but I'm looking for a bit of advice. I'm trying to research the mechanism of hair colour change during the natural mummification process, I believe there are a lot of natural mummies known from Egypt, any pointers as to where I read up on the technical literature about this? 

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2 hours ago, oldrover said:

kmt_sesh pardon my changing the subject for a moment, but I'm looking for a bit of advice. I'm trying to research the mechanism of hair colour change during the natural mummification process, I believe there are a lot of natural mummies known from Egypt, any pointers as to where I read up on the technical literature about this? 

By "natural mummification" I'm assuming you mean prehistoric burials in which people were naturally preserved by the desert environment, as opposed to artificial mummification from the long pharaonic period.

This is not something I've spent much time researching, probably because I have so very little left of my own. I have several web articles I've saved and will post them below. Some are based on scientific studies, others are just interesting. They all seem credible to me. Unfortunately in these articles natural mummies and artificial mummies are kind of lumped together:

https://sites.google.com/site/naomiastral/ancient-kemet/the-science-of-ancient-egyptian-hair

https://hiddenincatours.com/the-mystery-of-ancient-egypts-red-haired-mummies/

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/new-research-shows-some-ancient-egyptians-were-naturally-fair-haired-005812

https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/mummies-and-mummy-hair-from-ancient-egypt/

http://www.egyptorigins.org/ginger.htm

I hope these links are of use to you. Interesting is the study that posits not all light-colored or red-colored hair was dyed but was natural. It's long been known, for example, that analysis of the hair of Ramesses II have revealed that the roots are reddish, so natural. Also at play. of course, is the mineral composition of the soil in which a person was buried—this can affect hair color through time. And this would be especially true of prehistoric bodies, which were buried right in the desert floor. A good example of this sort of mummy is in the link above about Ginger, a famous prehistoric mummy in the British Museum with light-colored hair.

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19 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

By "natural mummification" I'm assuming you mean prehistoric burials in which people were naturally preserved by the desert environment, as opposed to artificial mummification from the long pharaonic period.

This is not something I've spent much time researching, probably because I have so very little left of my own. I have several web articles I've saved and will post them below. Some are based on scientific studies, others are just interesting. They all seem credible to me. Unfortunately in these articles natural mummies and artificial mummies are kind of lumped together:

https://sites.google.com/site/naomiastral/ancient-kemet/the-science-of-ancient-egyptian-hair

https://hiddenincatours.com/the-mystery-of-ancient-egypts-red-haired-mummies/

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/new-research-shows-some-ancient-egyptians-were-naturally-fair-haired-005812

https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/mummies-and-mummy-hair-from-ancient-egypt/

http://www.egyptorigins.org/ginger.htm

I hope these links are of use to you. Interesting is the study that posits not all light-colored or red-colored hair was dyed but was natural. It's long been known, for example, that analysis of the hair of Ramesses II have revealed that the roots are reddish, so natural. Also at play. of course, is the mineral composition of the soil in which a person was buried—this can affect hair color through time. And this would be especially true of prehistoric bodies, which were buried right in the desert floor. A good example of this sort of mummy is in the link above about Ginger, a famous prehistoric mummy in the British Museum with light-colored hair.

That is extremely useful, thanks for taking the time to do that. It is indeed the process of preservation in an arid desert environment that I was specifically thinking of, although in my case it's the Nullarbor Plain, Western Australia.  Thanks again.

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7 hours ago, oldrover said:

That is extremely useful, thanks for taking the time to do that. It is indeed the process of preservation in an arid desert environment that I was specifically thinking of, although in my case it's the Nullarbor Plain, Western Australia.  Thanks again.

I admit I know very little about Australian archaeology. Are well-preserved, desiccated bodies found there? Natural mummies, in other words?

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11 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

I admit I know very little about Australian archaeology. Are well-preserved, desiccated bodies found there? Natural mummies, in other words?

Yes, but not human mummies though, animals preserved in the caves on the Nullarbor, one whole one remarkably well preserved for an animal that dies around 2+ kya, and a few scraps, including a head.

https://twilightbeasts.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/nullarbor.jpg

Colour is an issue though, a contentious issue too when it comes to it. The specimen is pretty much bright ginger, very discoloured in my opinion from it's life appearance and similar to a faded taxidermy, yet obviously this specimen has been light protected by virtue of where it died, inside a cave, the conditions of which led to this degree of preservation. Now, I'd heard about natural human mummies with red hair from Egypt and NW China, so I wondered (although obviously the hair structure will be different in some respects) whether there'd be any clues there. But you say some of them were that colour? 

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  • 1 month later...
 
4 hours ago, Irna said:

kmt_sesh, you may be interested by this recent article about the Philadelphia mummies by S.J. Wolfe: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/mummies/

Thank you much, Irna! That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

I jumped the gun and announced this project before its time, but I want to get back to it. I'm in the middle of pretty serious medical training to take care of my condition, so I don't have much extra time right now. That's in between my job and the museum, no less.

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