Say Hello to Takherheb

Perth Museum Mummy in its coffin or sarcophagus.

Six months ago Perth Museum & Art Gallery’s Egyptian mummy made an exciting trip down to Manchester Children’s Hospital to undergo radiographic (CT scan and x-ray) examination of the mummy and stylistic analysis of the sarcophagus. The exciting results of the first phase of study are now in, the revelations including that she was indeed female and that she had a name.

scan of the Perth Mummy revealing
anatomical condition of the skeleton

The radiographic examinations revealed a human skeleton which had suffered extensive damage to the chest and pelvis, sometime after the body had been mummified. The damage is so extensive that determining the sex anatomically proved impossible. The torso damage also means that it cannot be established whether she went through the typical mummification process of internal organ removal.

X-ray of the Perth Mummy skull
revealing no breakages
and the eye sockets packed with linen.

The skull remains intact and radiography revealed that as part of the mummification process the brain mass was removed through the sinus cavities. The eyes were left in position and the globes packed with linen.

Dental examination revealed the loss of the back teeth on the upper jaw as a result of root infection. The surviving teeth on the lower jaw show heavy wear caused by a fibrous diet contaminated by inorganic particles such as sand.  

CT of the Perth Mummy skull 
revealing recessed alveolar

Diet was also responsible for the loss of many of the upper teeth. It caused the thickened ridge of bone which contains the teeth sockets – the alveolar bone – to recede around many of the teeth, causing them to loosen and eventually fall out before the bone healed.
The embalming process appears to have displaced some of the teeth and made the lower jaw protrude; certainty is difficult because the jaw joint is obscured by embalming materials.

The left calf-bone is missing, probably removed when an attempt in antiquity was made to unwrap and lift the mummy’s feet. She is very tightly bandaged and there is no evidence of amulets wrapped in the bindings. The mummy wrappings are of brown linen. A single shroud covers the upper torso with a vertical band laid head to feet and horizontal bands at the face, neck, chest, waist and feet. A twisted piece of linen is tied around the neck. This could be the remains of a strap used to lift the body into the coffin. Damage to the linen around the skull and feet shows that a resinous substance was applied partway through the wrapping process before a final layer of linen was applied.

Photograph showing Mummy bandaging technique and coffin snake decoration.

Investigation of the coffin design and its hieroglyphs indicate that it was made for a female of the 25^th-26^th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. This gives a date of approximately 760BC – 525BC. The female design traits include the hair styles and the serpents painted on either side of the lower half of the coffin. Stylistic investigation suggests that the coffin was probably made in the provincial town of Akhmim. This is on the east bank of the Nile and today is the largest town in Upper Egypt. The mix of design elements painted on the coffin reflects the provincial practice of selecting design elements that suited a customer’s taste or that they had seen in use elsewhere and found aesthetically pleasing.

Photograph of hieroglyphic inscription on the coffin lid.

The vertical columns of hieroglyphs on the lower torso of the coffin lid appear to record the names of the mummy’s parents and may also preserve details on geographic location and possibly a job title.

However layers of ingrained dirt prevent them form being read. Only specialist conservation of the coffin will reveal this further information. What can be read suggests that the name of the mummy is Ta-kr-hb (Takherheb), a female name. This name is known from other inscriptions (including another mummy, kept in the Museo Archeologico, Florence, Italy) but its meaning is not currently known.  

The story of Takherheb continues to unfold and the on-going study includes analysis of the mummification agents used in the embalming of the body and of the pigments used in the decoration of the coffin. Additional funding is needed to clean and conserve the coffin which may enable specialists to decipher more of the hieroglyphs on the coffin and to stabilise the condition of the mummy.

Perth Museum is hugely grateful for all the hard work carried out by the Manchester University team: Lidija McKnight, Judith Adams, Campbell Price, Robert Loynes, Stephanie Atherton, Roger Forshaw and all their colleagues in the radiographic team of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

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