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[Edmond Dantès]

Think you know mummies? Think again...

This exhibition will introduce you to eight people from ancient Egypt and Sudan whose bodies have been preserved, either naturally or by deliberate embalming. Using the latest technology, the exhibition will unlock hidden secrets to build up a picture of their lives in the Nile Valley over a remarkable 4,000 years – from prehistoric Egypt to Christian Sudan.

From a priest’s daughter to a temple singer, a middle-aged man to a young child, a temple doorkeeper to a woman with a Christian tattoo, find out how they lived and what happened to them after they died. Using interactive technology, discover new information about each mummy, from their state of health to how they were embalmed and preserved. Unravel the mysteries of mummification and gain a unique insight into these people’s lives.


About

The British Museum has always sought new ways to explore its collection, using the latest scientific techniques to shed new light on ancient cultures. This May new research on one of the most-popular areas of the collection – ancient Egyptian and Sudanese human remains or ‘mummies’- will be revealed through a ground-breaking interactive exhibition ‘Ancient lives, new discoveries’. Sponsored by Julius Baer with support from our technology partner Samsung, the exhibition uses state-of-the-art technology to allow visitors to delve inside mummy cases and examine the bodies underneath the wrappings, bringing us face to face with eight people who lived in the Nile Valley thousands of years ago.

The Museum is known for its innovative research and use of cutting-edge visualisation in this field. The first mummy entered the Museum’s collection in 1756, but for the past 200 years none of the mummies have been unwrapped, so technology has been critical to improving our understanding of how ancient cultures developed. A full x-ray survey of the mummies in the 1960s was followed in the 1990s by the use of CT scanners.

Now innovative advances in medical science and engineering technology can be applied to the study of ancient human remains. The most recent scans undertaken have used the new generation of medical CT scanners, capable of producing data of unprecedented high resolution. The transformation of this data into 3D visualisations has been achieved with volume graphics software originally designed for car engineering. Visitors will be able to view and interact with this data and to understand details of the lives of these individuals.

The exhibition will be structured around eight mummies which have been the focus of recent scientific investigation. Visitors will encounter each mummy with accompanying large-screen visualisations which journey into the body, through the skin to reveal organs, skeleton and the secrets of mummification.

The mummies selected cover a period of over 4000 years, from the Predynastic period to the Christian era, from sites in Egypt and the Sudan. The emphasis will be on revealing different aspects of living and dying in the ancient Nile Valley through these eight individuals and also through other contextual objects from the collection such as amulets, canopic jars, musical instruments and items of food. Mummification was used by people at different levels of society and was not just the preserve of Pharaohs.

Details of two of the mummies which will feature in the exhibition. In an adult male from Thebes mummified in c600BC, the CT data reveals details of the process that has been applied to preserve the body – the brain and the internal organs have partially been removed, and the soft tissues are in good condition. A specially designed visualisation will show the man’s head on three sides of a large cube, including the spatula used to remove the brain, which his embalmer left lodged within his skull. A replica of his lower mandible will show multiple dental abscesses which must have caused him considerable pain during his lifetime.

The exhibition will also feature a female singer called ‘Tamut’, who lived in Thebes in c900BC.,Her body reflects the highest level of mummification available at this period. This elite burial involved placing of amulets and other magical trappings on the body. An interactive digital visualisation and 3D prints will allow visitors to examine these ritual objects. A study of the scans reveals she suffered from extensive plaque in her arteries which could have contributed to her death.

The Mummies (as ordered above)

1. A young man preserved in the sand (Gebelein Man B)
2. A man embalmed for the afterlife (Linen man)
3. Tamut: a high-ranking priest’s daughter
4. Padiamenet: a temple doorkeeper
5. Tjayasetimu: a young temple singer
6. An unusual mummy from the Roman Period
7. A young child from the Roman Period
8. A Christian woman from Sudan

Telegraph review

No ancient Egyptians were harmed in the making of this exhibition. The curators are at such pains to point this out, they repeat it – at regular intervals – through the British Museum’s new mummies show and accompanying catalogue.

Their focus is on eight of the 120 mummies in the BM collection, their aim to analyse in unprecedented detail what lies beneath the coffins and bandages. Yet they stress they’ve acted not invasively but with the latest techniques of digital research. “The Museum,” we’re told, “is committed to caring for human remains with respect and dignity”.

I presume the implicit contrast being made here is between politically correct practice today and the gothy Victorian fondness for cracking open a mummy at a dinner party and poring morbidly over its remains, before retiring to the drawing room for brandy (and consigning the poor mummy to the bin).

These days, the investigations are much more scientific. The eight stars of 'Ancient Lives, New Discoveries', all one-time residents of the Nile Valley, were scanned after-hours with CT technology at Royal Brompton Hospital, and the results are now visible in the form of interactive, 3D imagery.

Thus, one can digitally “undress” Tamut, a female temple singer from Thebes, and scrutinise the many elaborate amulets buried with her. With the scroll of a touchscreen or press of a button, one can also zoom in on the bread in one man’s digestive tract and the tattoo to St Michael on the inner thigh of a woman in Christianised Sudan.

Mummies weren’t the preserve of pharaohs, and the curators have deliberately selected individuals from different classes of society, both adults and children. They seek to remove much of the mystery that has built up around mummification – dating back to the Classical Greek historian, Herodotus, and exacerbated by the indecipherability of hieroglyphics in Europe until the 1820s – reminding us the Ancient Egyptians were humans just like we are.

The scans reveal information such as the deceased’s sex and age-at-death, as well as any medical conditions they may have had. We can now, for instance, see the large dental abscesses of the temple doorkeeper, Padiamenet, not to mention the fatty plaque deposits in his left leg – for which a GP today would prescribe a good dose of statins.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a show that seeks to collapse the distance between us and them, there’s little on the religious belief system behind mummification (correct care of dead bodies was felt necessary to placate the god Osiris and ensure continued existence in the afterlife).

More attention is paid to the mummifying process itself, which varied little in the four millennia in question (from 3500 BC onwards) and involved removing perishable internal organs before the corpse was dried. One such organ was the brain, which was removed very precisely through the nose after a 2x2 cm hole was cut at the base of the frontal bone. (Though in one case here, the close-ups reveal a sloppy embalmer’s spatula lost inside a poor chap’s skull.)

This is a rigorous, erudite exhibition, an opportunity to get up close and uniquely personal with long-dead, fellow humans. And it’s entirely apt that a museum founded under Enlightenment principles in the mid-18th century should adopt the scientific approach that it does.

My only criticism is that, in doing so, much of the magical spookiness that makes mummies so thrilling has been lost. From Edgar Allan Poe to Scooby Doo, via Boris Karloff’s 1932 film The Mummy, popular culture is littered with nightmare tales of the mummified springing hauntingly back to life. For generation after generation of schoolchildren, awed by the ancients’ attempts to reach out beyond the grave, little has ever matched mummies for thrill factor.

Alas, this is an exhibition that sacrifices much of that wonder for the drily factual and technical.

Link


22 May – 30 November 2014

Free entrance for members/Open late Fridays


Trailer

Link

 

[CyclopsRock]

The mummies selected cover a period of over 4000 years, from the Predynastic period to the Christian era, from sites in Egypt and the Sudan.

That's absolutely crazy, isn't it? 4,000 years. Think of everything that's happened even in the last 150 years. If you take the time between the height of the Roman empire and now, and double that, you still don't get 4,000 years.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

That's absolutely crazy, isn't it? 4,000 years. Think of everything that's happened even in the last 150 years. If you take the time between the height of the Roman empire and now, and double that, you still don't get 4,000 years.

Yes indeed. Even then, it's still a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

More images:

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Interesting to note how much brain residue (blue) was left in the skull of 'Linen man' and the embalmers tool (green) left in the skull.

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Fantastic exhibition I must say. Innovative in its use of interactive CT imagery, with a good narrative structure too, something that is lacking in the Viking exhibition running concurrently with this exhibition. Looking forward to attending the upcoming Friday lecture fronted by art critic Alastair Sooke who recently presented his Treasures of Ancient Egypt documentary series on BBC4.