[ad_1]
An Egyptian mummy decorated with a portrait of a woman contained a surprise – the body of a child who was only 5 years old when he died.
Now, scientists have learned more about the mysterious young girl and her burial, through high-resolution scans and X-ray “microarrays” that targeted very small regions of the intact artifact.
Computed tomography (CT) scans of the mummy’s teeth and femur confirmed the girl’s age, although she showed no signs of trauma to the bone that could suggest the cause of her death.
High-intensity targeted x-rays also revealed a mysterious object that had been placed on the child’s abdomen, scientists have reported in a new study.
Scans taken on the mummy about two decades ago were low in contrast and many details were difficult to see. For the new analysis, the researchers performed new CT scans to visualize the structure of the mummy in its entirety.
They then focused on specific regions using X-ray diffraction, in which a tightly focused X-ray beam bounces off atoms in crystal structures; variations in diffraction patterns reveal the type of material to which it is made.
This is the first time that X-ray diffraction has been used on an intact mummy, said lead author of the study, Stuart Stock, a research professor of cell and developmental biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern. University in Chicago.
The mummy, known as “Hawara Portrait Mummy No. 4”, is in the collection of the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. It was excavated between 1910 and 1911 at the ancient Egyptian site of Hawara and dates back to around the first century AD, when Egypt was under Roman rule.
“During Roman times in Egypt, they started making mummies with portraits attached to the front surface,” Stock told Live Science.
“Several thousand have been made, but most of the portraits have been taken out of the mummies we have – maybe only 100 to 150 still have the portrait attached to the mummy,” he said.
Although the portrait on mummy # 4 shows an adult female, the mummy’s small size suggests otherwise – and scans confirmed the mummy was a child, still so young that none of its permanent teeth were had emerged.
The portrait, ostensibly showing an adult woman. (Stuart R. Stock)
Her body measured 937 millimeters from the top of her skull to the soles of her feet, and the wraps added an extra 50 mm (2 inches), according to the study.
The researchers also detected 36 needle-like structures in the casing – 11 around the head and neck, 20 near the feet and five near the torso. X-ray diffraction determined that these were modern metal wires or pins that could have been added to stabilize the artifact over the past century.
One surprising find was an irregular layer of sediment in the mummy’s wrappers, possibly mud that had been used by the priests present to secure the mummy’s bandages, Stock suggested.
Another puzzling find was a small elliptical object about 0.3 inches (7 mm) long, which researchers found in the envelopes of the mummy on the abdomen, dubbing the object “Inclusion F.”
(Stuart R. Stock)
X-ray diffraction showed it to be made of calcite – but what was it? One possibility is that it could be an included amulet because the child’s body was damaged during mummification, Stock said.
After such an accident, the priests often placed an amulet like a scarab on the damaged body part to protect the person in the afterlife, and the new “drop” of calcite was about the right size and in the body. good position for her to be a protective beetle, Stock explains.
However, the scanner’s resolution was not high enough to show details etched into the object, so it’s impossible to say for sure what that might be, he added.
“Every time you go into a study like this, you get good answers. But then you just raise other questions,” Stock said.
The results were published online Nov. 25 in the Royal Society Interface Journal.
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
[ad_2]
Source link