Warrior king had great teeth: Scans shed light on mummies
The discovery in 1881 of the resting place for more than 40 royal mummies at Luxor, including some of the greatest pharaohs in history, was celebrated across Egypt.
Yet the authorities faced a problem – how to move the mummies and countless artefacts before they were stolen.
The Egyptian government sent Émile Brugsch, head of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, to oversee their safe delivery.
Coming face to face with enormous mummy casks that held Egypt’s greatest rulers, surrounded by piles of ancient artefacts, was a jaw-dropping moment. Brugsch later wrote: “Collecting my senses, I made the best examination of them I could by the light of my torch, and at once saw they contained the mummies of royal personages of both sexes. Their gold coverings and polished surfaces so plainly reflected my own excited visage that it seemed as though I was looking into the face of my own ancestors.”
It took more than 300 men three days to move the artefacts from their tomb to a boat headed for Cairo.
“Their minds were blown by what they found,” said Golia. “Yet they realised they had to get it out of there as soon as possible before it was stolen. So they hired men to help in this tremendously laborious process to remove the artefacts from the tomb, wrap them in straw matting, then carry them two miles across the floodplain to the Nile, then across the river and on to the museum steamer that would take them to Cairo.”
Custom officials were perplexed with how to process this unusual cargo: “When the museum steamer arrived in the port of Bulaq in Cairo, customs officials were perplexed about how to classify the mummies because there was no category for importing such a thing. As the Egyptians are slavish bureaucrats, they had to classify it somehow, so they classified it is dried fish.”
Eventually, the haul made it to the Egyptian Museum where the mummies were examined and placed on display. Exhibits like the mummy of Seti I, found in the cache, can still be seen in the museum today.
The mummies found in 1881 included that of warrior king Pharoah Amenhotep I. Last year, X-ray scanning revealed fresh details about the ruler when radiologist Sahar Saleem said: “We show that Amenhotep I was approximately 35 years old when he died. He was approximately 5ft 6in, circumcised, and had good teeth. Within his wrappings, he wore 30 amulets and a unique golden girdle with gold beads.
“Amenhotep I seems to have physically resembled his father…he had a narrow chin, a small narrow nose, curly hair and mildly protruding upper teeth.
“Mummified bodies were well preserved. Even the tiny bones inside the ears were preserved. No doubt Amenhotep’s teeth were well-preserved. Many royal mummies had bad teeth, but Amenhotep I had good teeth.”