[ad_1]
New technologies have allowed scientists to examine the inside of a tiny Egyptian mummy that’s nearly 2,000 years old. This means scientists can examine objects buried with a dead body non-invasively. Using these technologies, they identified an ancient scarab that provides new perspectives on mummies in death and life. Remarkably, they found that the portrait of the mummy on the deceased did not match the mummy of the little girl in the packaging. It may be a reflection of ancient funeral practices or beliefs about the afterlife, and it remains a mystery. In the 19 e Researchers in the century AD often dismantled mummies when they examined them. Subsequent x-rays were used to examine the mummified remains non-invasively. However, this also has its limits.
Recently, researchers have used computed tomography (CT) and X-ray diffraction, which can characterize crystalline materials. One of the research team leaders, Stuart R. Stock, a professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, told CNN that these technologies allowed them to “create a three-dimensional roadmap of contents of the mummy ”.
The little girl’s mummy was discovered in Hawara, Fayoum, in 1910. It was found in a burial site, which has given rise to a host of important finds. The little girl’s mummy is around 1900 years old. And the remains date from when Rome controlled Egypt.
Little girl mom was clearly from the elite class
Experts were able to direct very fine X-ray beams at the mummy of the little girl at the Argonne National Laboratory, a Chicago particle accelerator. This allowed them to spot the materials and objects in the mummy’s packaging. Professor Stock is quoted by CNN as saying it “gives off what is essentially a characteristic fingerprint of the material.”
They identified a small piece of calcium carbonate, which was very pure and had apparently been shaped. “This opaque object has about the right shape for a beetle,” Professor Stock told CNN. The scarab, a scarab, was a symbol of rebirth. Replica beetles were often placed in a cut in the stomach of the deceased during the mummification process.
The deceased girl was once part of the local elite, although she was almost certainly not a member of the royal family. Professor Stock told 9 News that the deceased family “could afford to have a beetle and a mummification, which required enormous resources.”
The mystery or problem uncovered in the mummy investigation was that the painted image or portrait of the mummy, which is quite realistic, was that of an adult woman. Mummy portraits were commonly used in Roman-Egyptian funerary practices, and many similar examples of this type of funerary art have been found at Fayum.
The little girl’s mummy portrait is obviously not a little girl, and it’s the mystery that still needs to be solved. ( Stuart R. Stock )
The little girl mom and her mom Portrait
The portrait of the deceased’s mummy was considered an excellent source for “imagining” the little girl, who died nearly 1900 years ago. These portraits were placed on the mummy wrappers directly on the face of the deceased. For example, her hairstyle in the portrait allowed them to date her as having lived between 150 and 200 AD. However, upon further investigation, the research team found that the imagery they had made of the contents of the mummy revealed someone very different from the portrait.
The portrait showed a young adult woman. However, the image created by X-rays and CT scans told a different story. Science reported that the body of the deceased belonged to “a child of about 5 years old”. It was not what they expected based on the portrait of the funeral mummy.
A closer examination revealed that the little girl was only 94 cm tall and had not suffered a violent death. The fact that this is a little mom girl is not surprising. In ancient Egypt, there were high rates of infant mortality, due to poor hygiene, malnutrition and epidemics, even among the elite class.
X-ray diffraction showed the little girl’s eruptless adult teeth and a mass of resin inside her skull . ( Stuart R. Stock )
Mummy portraits may have been a belief in the afterlife
It is a mystery why the portrait of the mummy of the little girl was different from that of the deceased. According to Science, experts say “the paintings may not always have been an accurate representation of the dead individual inside.” The image can be an idealized image of what the girl would have looked like if she had lived into adulthood. On the other hand, it may represent a belief in how the deceased person would appear in the Hereafter. However, no one knows for sure.
Further research may help solve the mystery of why the image of the little girl’s mummy in the coffin is that of an adult when the mummy was actually just a five-year-old girl.
Experts believe that the methods they used can be very useful in future research. These advanced technologies can help identify the nature of buried or buried objects without having to unpack and potentially damage a mummified body.
Top image: CT image of the little girl’s mummy Source: Stuart R. Stock
By Ed Whelan
[ad_2]
Source link