Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1991 - 97

the pieces to their proper positions and to fabricate
unnecessary substitutes out of cloth packing.
The facial region and mandible were missing from
the exposed skull; yet fragments of facial bone and a
broken tooth were found in the debris lying on the floor
of the coffin. Some of these pieces could be fitted into
place, suggesting that the body was buried intact. Fortunately, the base of the skull was intact; the brain had
been removed through the nasal passage, using hooks,
in typical Egyptian fashion. The skull still contained the
hardened resins from this embalming process (showing,
incidentally, that the head was originally tilted slightly);
there are traces as well of the wasp's nest from much
more recent times. It is unfortunate that the mandible
was missing; it might have told us much more about the
deceased. One upper jaw fragment, found on the coffin
floor, holds a broken incisor and a molar.
Storey concluded that the body is that of a mature
male, age 31-51, but most likely in his late 30s or early
40s. The CAT-scan images of the femur and tibia could
be measured and indicate an overall stature of about
5'4". Finally, it could be deduced from the examination
of exposed remains that the deceased had survived a
case of childhood anemia, perhaps associated with disease. There were signs of moderate arthritic degeneration of a cervical vertebra, but no indication of serious
arthritis elsewhere.
After the body's examination we turned our attention
to the problem of the wooden poles inside it. We found,
for example, that several mummies in the British
Museum exhibit similar features. We corresponded,
too, with Rosalie David, director of the Manchester
Museum Mummy Project. Her experience with Manchester mummy no. 1770, unwrapped in 1975, sugWas the mummy really that of Ankh-hap,
gested the reburial of a plundered, stick-braced mummy
in much the same condition as our own at the HMNS.
To find out whether the two cases were indeed rare examples of stick-braced reburials, we needed more data
on the sticks themselves. We had already turned to the
UH Biology Department for help in searching for possible remains of parasites (we found none); we returned
there for an expert opinion on the type of wood found
inside the HMNS mummy. A microscopic analysis was
made of a small shaving taken from the exposed pole at
the mummy's neck. This examination revealed that the
wood was from a conifer indigenous to a temperate climate; the presence of resin canals narrowed the range
to pine, spruce, larch, or Douglas fir.
Although we knew that wooden poles had been found
in other mummies, including some with similar signs of
"dismemberment" and disarray, we were concerned that
the coniferous wood from the HMNS mummy might be
quite modern, and even locati. To investigate the true
relationship between the coffin, mummy, and sticks, we
decided to submit a sample of each for carbon dating.
Because of lab costs, we found the prospect of doing this
48 Archaeology

A 1939 photographfrom the Dallas Morning News showsthe
mummyon display at TexasA&M University.
work rather daunting. Fortunately, we were able to secure the voluntary services of the Radio-Carbon Lab of
the Balcones Research Center at the University of Texas
at Austin.
or was a horribly mutilated Egyptian

of the Roman

First, we carbon-dated a small sample of undecorated
wood that had broken off from a corner of the coffin. The
result was an age of 3000 years b.p. (before the present)
± 80 years, which would place the cutting of the tree from
which the boards were made sometime in the late second
or early first millennium b.c. According to experts, the design and decoration of the coffin suggested that it was made
around the seventh century b.c. or later. Art and science,
then, would place the burial in the first millennium b.c.,
probably in the Late Period of Egyptian history.
Next, we dated a fragment of cloth wrapping that
formed an odd assemblage found amid those "assorted
bones and wrapping debris" lying on the coffin floor.
This separately wrapped, resined package contained a
right rib attached (anatomically incorrectly) to the left
scapula. Like the displaced hands, these bones belonged
to the mummy but were somehow removed from the
body and later rewrapped and returned to the coffin.
Such an assemblage suggested that the mummy had indeed been disturbed and then restored and reburied in
either ancient or modern times. This carbon date was
decidedly old and offered more evidence for a possible

Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1991

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - November/December 1991