The Egyptian Royal Mummy Project has revealed many important secrets of the ancient Egyptian royal mummies. We have been working on this project since 2005 and have made many major discoveries using advanced X-ray technology, CT (computer tomography) scanning, and advanced computer software to digitally unwrap the mummies using a safe and non-invasive method without the need to touch them.

A study of this sort was carried out on the mummy of Amenhotep I that revealed for the first time the face of the pharaoh, his age, health condition, and many secrets about his mummy’s unique mummification and reburial. The study was done by Sahar Salim, a radiologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University, and the author of this article.

Thanks to the Egyptian Royal Mummy Project, Salim has made many important discoveries about the royal mummies. The study of the mummy of Amenhotep I, published in the well-known medical journal Frontiers in Medicine, announced some of these discoveries in December last year, and they were subsequently reported worldwide.

However, before describing the mummy of Amenhotep I in more detail, it is important to explain the recent major discoveries concerning the mummy of Sequenenre Taa II, the circumstances of whose death were revealed by CT scan, and the mummy known as “the screaming woman.” Salim is now a great scholar in this field, and no other radiologist has had the opportunity to work on the royal mummies in this way.

The question of why the work is important can be answered by reminding ourselves of the story of their discovery. The royal mummies were found in two caches. The first one was at Deir Al-Bahari, discovered in 1881, and the other cache was inside the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35). When the mummy of Ramses II arrived in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the then ruler of Egypt, the khedive Ismail, decided to go to see it. The authorities at the museum put the mummy in a gallery and removed most of the linen surrounding it. Today, we do not need to do this because we can safely examine the mummy using a non-invasive method.

Before I reveal the secrets of the three mummies investigated using the new technology, I would also like to tell you a story of something that happened to me when I was a young archaeologist. The head of Egypt’s Antiquities Department at the time asked me to take princess Margaret, sister of the queen of England, to visit the Cairo Museum. While I was taking her on a tour, she saw the mummy of Ramses II exhibited in the hall of the museum. I saw her cover her eyes and run away. I asked her why she had done so, and she said that “I cannot stand looking at a human being like that.”

When I became head of antiquities in Egypt, this reaction led me to stop showing the mummies off for entertainment as they had been shown previously. I decided that all the royal mummies should be shown for educational purposes only and not just for a thrill. As a result, we designed the exhibition such that the mummies were shown as if they were inside their tombs with information on each monarch and his mummy beside the coffin. We also included information from CT scans of the mummies.

Let us return to the stories of the mummies. The pharaoh Sequenenre Taa II ruled southern Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period and the occupation of the country by the Hyksos, a foreign dynasty that seized northern Egypt for about a century (1650-1550 BCE). The mummy of Sequenenre was uncovered in 1881 in the Deir al-Bahri cache mentioned above, and it was examined in 1881 and again in the 1960s by X-ray. The two studies revealed serious head injuries that very likely resulted in the king’s death. Several theories were presented concerning the circumstances surrounding his demise, including a conspiracy in the palace, death on the battlefield, and even execution by the Hyksos king himself.

The new study using modern CT scanning undertaken by the author and Salim revealed a great deal of new information about the mummy of Sequenenre Taa II. The wounds to the king’s head were compared with those caused by various Hyksos weapons, including an axe, a spear, and several daggers stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The results indicated that Sequenenre was killed by multiple blows to the head from different weapons at different angles and therefore likely by multiple attackers.

The deformation of the king’s hands, also revealed by the CT scan, might indicate that his hands were bound at the time of the attack. When paired with the fact that there appeared to be no injuries to his body, we concluded that the most likely cause of death was ceremonial execution. He could have been captured and restrained on the battlefield. The CT study also determined that Sequenenre would have been about 40 years old at the time of his death based on the shape of his joints.

Due to the state of preservation of the mummy, previous studies had suggested that the mummification process was done quickly and likely not by the royal mummification workshop. But our study uncovered that care had been taken to fill and hide the many head wounds with mummification materials, meaning that the mummy had indeed been mummified in the royal workshop.

The study thus provided important new details about a pivotal point in ancient Egyptian history.

SCREAMING MUMMY: Now onto the study of “unknown woman A” known as the “screaming mummy” or the “screaming woman”.

This mummy was also uncovered in the 1881 Deir Al-Bahari cache and was immediately given this nickname based on her seemingly terrified expression with an open mouth and seemingly unusual posture. A hieratic inscription on the linen of the mummy bears the titles of “the royal daughter, the royal sister of Meret Amun”. However, there are several princesses with this name.

The CT study was able to shed light on the cause of death of the woman and probably also on her unusual appearance as well. It demonstrated that she had suffered from severe atherosclerosis in the coronary and neck arteries as well as the abdominal aorta and iliac arteries. In other words, the woman most likely died of a heart attack. We must assume that the embalmers mummified her contracted body directly, thus preserving her unusual posture and open mouth.

The mummy of Amenhotep I with its gorgeous funerary mask was the icon of the majestic Royal Mummies Parade that took place in April 2021 in Cairo. Amenhotep I was the son of Ahmose I, the conqueror of the Hyksos and founder of the New Kingdom and the 18th Dynasty. He took the throne after his father and ruled for 21 years from 1525 to 1504 BCE.

The mummy of Amenhotep I, like the others, was uncovered in 1881 in the mummy cache at Deir Al-Bahari. Between 1881 and 1886, all of the mummies from the cache were unwrapped with the exception of Amenhotep I. His mummy was beautifully covered in wreaths of coloured flowers and remained well preserved with its finely crafted mask.

Using a CT machine, we were able to digitally unwrap the mummy while keeping the skillful embalming intact. This modern technique of CT scanning and advanced computer software enabled us to digitally remove the wrappings of the mummy of Amenhotep I non-invasively. This digital technique is much safer than the previous method of physically unwrapping and dissecting the mummy, which would have caused damage to the body of the king.

This study for the first time succeeded in revealing the face of Amenhotep I and showed a facial resemblance to his father Ahmose I, whose mummy is preserved in the Luxor Museum. The study was also able to determine the age of the king at the time of his death at around 35 years old. We also found that the king was in seemingly good health at the time of his death with no visible indicators of disease or injuries that would indicate the cause.

It also provided valuable information about the distinctive embalming method used for the mummy. For instance, the presence of the king’s brain in the mummy signifies that the brain was not removed during the mummification process, as was standard with most other kings of the New Kingdom such as Tutankhamun and Ramses II, for example. The study carried out by a purely Egyptian team also revealed through the production of three-dimensional radiographs the presence of 30 amulets inside the mummy as well as a belt beneath the king’s back consisting of 34 golden beads.

Salim and I have used CT scans to examine 40 royal mummies from the New Kingdom as part of the Egyptian Royal Mummy Project run by the Ministry of Antiquities that started in 2005 and continues today. We look forward to continuing to uncover the secrets of the past using modern technologies in the future.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 13 January, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.