WRAP STAR EXPOSED
Archaeologists and medical researchers have united to finally “unwrap” a 3,500-year-old pharaoh — without lifting a single gauze.
The experts have eagerly awaited the opportunity to see the corpse of Amenhotep I, discovered in 1881.
Computed tomography (CT) technology, which creates a cross-section of a body using X-rays, revealed the pharaoh’s face and a chestful of treasure, including 30 amulets and “a unique golden girdle with gold beads,” according to findings published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
“By digitally unwrapping the mummy and ‘peeling off’ its virtual layer — the facemask, the bandages, and the mummy itself — we could study this well-preserved pharaoh in unprecedented detail,” said study coauthor Sahar Saleem, a radiology professor at Cairo University’s school of medicine.
Amenhotep I ruled between about 1525 BC, when he was a teen, to 1504 BC during the 18th Dynasty. He had grown to 5-foot-6 by the time he died at age 35 of as yet unknown causes.
Cursed by grave robbers
His masked visage had been a central icon of Egypt’s Royal Golden Mummy Parade, held in March this year to commemorate the relocation of several royal mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo, to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in the ancient city of Fustat, now Old Cairo.
French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero and his team discovered Amenhotep I with several other mummies at
Deir el-Bahari on the west bank of Thebes (now Luxor) in southern Egypt. Hieroglyphics at the tomb indicated that they’d been moved from their unknown original burial site during the 21st dynasty (circa 1000 BC) following a spate of grave robberies.
While other modern discoveries were opened by archaeologists, researchers were worried that the elements would destroy Amenhotep.
“This fact that Amenhotep I’s mummy had never been unwrapped in modern times gave us a unique opportunity: not just to study how he had originally been mummified and buried, but also how he had been treated and reburied twice, centuries after his death, by High Priests of Amun,” Saleem said.
Mystery remains concerning the death of Amenhotep. CT scans revealed no “wounds or disfigurement
due to disease to justify the cause of death,” said Saleem, who found “numerous mutilations post mortem, presumably by grave robbers after his first burial.”
Anatomic anomalies
Amenhotep’s entrails were removed, as is customary for ancient Egyptian embalming methods. But his brain was left in the body, which is unusual, as in most mummies it was removed through the nose. He died with a healthy set of teeth and was circumcised, as was tradition.
He “seems to have physically resembled his father,” according to Saleem. “He had a narrow chin, a small narrow nose, curly hair and mildly protruding upper teeth.”
Amenhotep’s father, Ahmose I, ruled during a peak period of Egypt’s power after he expelled the invading Hyksos, then launched his expansion into Sudan and Libya — meanwhile splurging on a campaign for several new national monuments.
Ahmose I and his wife, Ahmose-Nefertari, were worshipped as gods in their death, and the burial of their son reflected that lineage.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister of antold tiquities and co-author of the study, Live Science that the bejeweled girdle may hold “a magical meaning,” while the amulets “each had a function to help the deceased king in the afterlife.”
Robberies had done enough damage to Amenhotep’s body that it had to be remummified during the 11th century BC.
“We show that at least for Amenhotep I, the priests of the 21st Dynasty lovingly repaired the injuries inflicted by the tomb robbers, restored his mummy to its former glory and preamuserved the magnificent jewelry and lets in place,” Saleem said.
Since 2005, Hawass and Saleem have tomummies gether studied more than 40 royal dating back to the new Kingdom of Egypt.