Around 2,900 years ago, an ancient Egyptian man, likely in his 20s, passed away after suffering from a rare, cancerlike disease that may also have left him with a type of diabetes.
When he died he was mummified, following the procedure of the time. The embalmers removed his brain(through the nose it appears), poured resin-like fluid into his head and pelvis, took out some of his organs and inserted four linen “packets” into his body. At some point the mummy was transferred to the 2,300 year-old sarcophagus of a woman named Kareset, an artifact that is now in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Croatia.
The mummy transfer may have been the work of 19th-century antiquity traders keen on selling Kareset’s coffin but wanting to have a mummy inside to raise the price.
Until now, scientists had assumed a female mummy was inside the Egyptian coffin. The new research reveals not only that the body does not belong to Kareset, but the male mummy inside was sick. Read more.
NEW YORK: An antiques dealer pleaded guilty Wednesday to smuggling ancient Egyptian treasures, including a coffin, to the United States.
Mousa Khouli, also known as Morris Khouli, aged 38, faces up to 20 years of prison for “smuggling Egyptian cultural property into the United States and making a false statement to law enforcement authorities,” the federal prosecutor’s office in New York said.
Khouli arranged for the purchase and smuggling of a Greco-Roman style Egyptian coffin, a three-part nesting coffin set, a set of Egyptian funerary boats, and Egyptian limestone figures between October 2008 and November 2009, officials said.
The antiquities were exported from Dubai into the United States with false documentation.
Khouli also settled a civil complaint seeking forfeiture of Egyptian and Iraqi artifacts, prosecutors said. (source)
A coffin on display at a museum in Devon is a rare 3,500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus, it has emerged.
Torquay Museum were unaware of the coffin’s significance until an expert from Bristol University identified it as one of only two in the country.
Dr Aidan Dodson, who is cataloguing the country’s Egyptian artefacts, believes the coffin pre-dates the mummified boy’s body it contains by 1,000 years.
He said: “It’s very significant as very few coffins of that period survive.”
The highly decorated sarcophagus and the mummified remains of a boy, aged between three and four, were donated to the museum in the 1950s.
But the artefacts were kept in storage for years and rarely displayed until 2007 when they were selected as the centrepiece of an Egyptian exhibition.
“When I walked into the museum for the first time I realised that the coffin was something really special,” said Dr Dodson. Read more.
FOR nine months, experts have been using a hyperdermic needle and catheter tubing to slowly restore a single 2,750-year-old coffin.
A small team of conservators at the Ashmolean Museum are finishing their painstaking work to restore and preserve dozens of Ancient Egyptian artefacts in time for the grand opening of the new £5m galleries next month.
The new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia will open to the public on Saturday, November 26, and set to boost visitor numbers to new record levels.
But, behind the scenes and high above the Oxford skyline, the experts have spent months slowly conserving priceless objects inch-by-inch. Read more.
Dr Aidan Dodson, a senior research fellow in Bristol’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology made the discovery while undertaking a long-term project to catalogue every single Egyptian coffin in English and Welsh provincial museums.
Dr Dodson said: “When I walked into Torquay Museum for the first time I realised that the coffin was something really special. Not only was it of a design of which there is probably only one other example in the UK (in Bristol), but the quality was exceptional.
“Cut from a single log of cedar wood, it is exquisitely carved, inlaid and painted. For a child to have been given something like that, he must have had very important parents – perhaps even a king and queen. Unfortunately, the part of the inscription which named the boy and his parents is so badly damaged that we cannot be certain.
“The inscription had been re-worked at some point for a new owner – a 2,500 year old mummified boy, anonymous but given the name Psamtek by his current custodians, that came to Torquay Museum with the coffin when in was donated in the 1950s. ‘Psamtek’ is in fact nearly 1,000 years younger than the coffin itself.” Read more.
A 2,500-year-old mummified boy, who is a star draw at Devon’s oldest museum, has unexpectedly been put in the shade – by the very coffin in which he lies. Ever since he went on show as part of a major revamp at Torquay Museum in 2007, Psamtek – the only human mummy on public display in the county – has captured the imagination of thousands of curious visitors. But now his own mummy-shaped coffin has stolen the limelight, after museum officials were told the ornate near-4ft-long object (1.2m) is nearly 1,000 years older than the body it contains. Further investigation reveals the coffin may have been made for a junior member of royalty more than a century before the time of the famous boy king Tutankhamun. Museum curator Barry Chandler said: “It’s an extraordinary discovery and means that the coffin is now the most spectacular exhibit in our entire collection. “It’s extremely rare – even the British Museum doesn’t have one quite like it.” Read more.
NAM DINH — An ancient tomb in the northern province of Nam Dinh is the smallest composite tomb discovered in Viet Nam so far, Nguyen Lan Cuong, deputy general secretary of the Viet Nam Archaeology Association, told Viet Nam News.
The outer coffin was 107cm in length, 36cm in width and 40cm in height, while the inner coffin was 94.5cm in length, 27.3cm in width and 33.4cm in height. The compound was said to consist of lime, molasses, sand and charcoal with a piece of cloth used to enclose the contents.
Archaeologists found a skull and bones, affirming their thought that it was an exhumation tomb. Based on initial studies of the relics unearthed, Cuong supposed that the tomb was built around 300 years ago in the later Le dynasty (1533-1788).
This is the first time researchers have identified oil used to embalm the body. The archaeology crew took the oil and specimens in for research: the bones were put in an oblong earthenware container for reburial and brought to the regional cemetery, while the coffin was displayed at Nam Dinh Museum. Read more.
His occupation may have contributed to his poor health. Ancient records suggest that weavers were near the bottom of the social heap. Read more.
