Special visitor to the Artifact Lab

Posted on March 13, 2013 by mollygleeson

Last week, we had a special visitor in the Artifact Lab. We recently managed to track down the person who performed PUM I’s autopsy – Dr. Michael Zimmerman. Back in 1972, Dr. Zimmerman was head of pathology at the University Hospital, and PUM I was the first mummy he helped autopsy at the Penn Museum (and one of the first mummies to be autopsied in this way in the world). Dr. Zimmerman went on to receive a PhD in anthropology and is now well known as a paleopathologist who has studied over 200 mummies from around the world.

Dr. Michael Zimmerman performing the autopsy in 1972 (left image, on left) and just last week, visiting PUM I in the Artifact Lab

We posted more information about this on the Museum blog last week. For those of you who didn’t see this article, please check it out! You can access it by following this link.

Screaming mummies

Posted on February 6, 2013 by mollygleeson

Melissa Miller, our talented undergraduate intern from the University of Delaware, recently created a series of prints in her Intro to Printmaking class – inspired by…you guessed it…mummies!

For one of her projects, she was instructed to make a zinc plate etching of something emotionally significant to her. We have really made Melissa get down and dirty with our mummy PUM I – one of her projects in the Artifact Lab has been to sort through the bag that was found inside PUM I’s chest, which, as it turns out, was filled with fragments of textile from his wrappings, along with bones, fragments of skin and other soft tissue, and even a few more beads that originally made up his beaded shroud.

Just some of the materials that came out of that bag we found in PUM I’s chest

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Melissa may feel a bit…affected…by this subject. Here is one of her first prints:

Melissa’s first “Screaming Mummy” drypoint etching

Melissa chose to create an image of this particular “screaming mummy”, also known as Unknown Man E, for her project because of his dramatic expression, which inspired her to look into the context in which he was buried. Unknown Man E was discovered in the Valley of the Kings, which implies his high status. He was buried with a sheepskin, which was considered by the ancient Egyptians to be ritually unclean, and his organs were not removed, indicating that his body did not receive the traditional mummification treatment. It has been suggested that this man may have been Prince Pentewere, son of Ramses III. According to historians, Pentewere was involved in an assassination scheme against his father, the pharaoh, which was very recently declared to have been successful. After Pentewere’s trial he was permitted to kill himself. Such circumstances may explain Unknown Man E’s curious burial, and as some would suggest, the expression of horror on his mummified face.

While this seems to be a believable theory, as Mark Rose explains in his article “Screaming Mummies”, this open-mouthed expression is also found on other mummies, and may not be reflective of the circumstances of death or the expression on a person’s face at the time of death. For more on this subject, a link to this article can be found in the Learn More section of this site.

Whatever the truth may be, the image of Unknown Man E drew Melissa’s attention and, as she said, made him the perfect subject for her printmaking project.

After her first etching, she applied an aquatint, which allowed her to achieve a wider variety of grey tones. It also gave the image a grainy texture – which Melissa felt added a desirable ghastly feeling to the image.

Screaming mummy etching with aquatint

Finally, she achieved higher contrast between the darks and lights by re-etching some of the lines and enhancing the aquatint, producing this image:

The final, ghastly, image

All three of these images can be found side-by-side in the Fun Stuff section of our blog. I’d like to extend a special thanks to Melissa for her help with this post, and her creativity!

Mystery solved!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by mollygleeson

Hello again. Melissa the intern here! One of the things I love about working in the Artifact Lab is that every day is like a new Sherlock Holmes novel! For my latest project I have been investigating and treating a 4 x 4 ½ inch piece of paper associated with PUM I’s remains. This paper was believed to be a train ticket – according to museum documents the research group who autopsied PUM I in 1972 found “a 100 year old railway ticket stuffed into a hole in the chest (someone must have felt that the mummy needed a ticket for its trip to the United States in the 19^th century).”

When we brought PUM I and his remains up to the Artifact Lab for conservation treatment, this piece of paper was found in a plastic bag along with some of his ribs.

The “train ticket” in a bag with PUM I’s ribs

By the time I got to examine the paper, it was extremely folded and bent, which made reading the text very difficult.

The piece of paper after removing it from the plastic bag

It was clear, however, that half the text was written in French and the other half was written in Arabic. In order to make the smaller print more legible, I relaxed and reduced the creases in the paper by humidifying it, using Mylar polyester film, damp blotter paper, and Gortex, a material made of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) that allows water to pass through as a vapor. By humidifying the paper, the creases and folds began to relax, and with the help of gravity and some weights I was able to flatten the paper into its original shape.

Paper after humidifying and relaxing

After completing the humidification treatment, it became much easier to read the smaller print. Unfortunately I have very limited experience with reading French and even less with Arabic. But thanks to Google translate I was able to not only translate the text, but determine that both the French and Arabic portions of the paper say the same thing. The text reads something like this:

April 15 Wednesday

Sunrise in 5 h. 29 m. Time

Sunset Cairo 6 h. 21 m. Average

Add 5 h. 39 m. hours the average time for the Arab hours

17 Moharrem 1321 7 Barmouda 1619

Everything seemed to make sense, but the words Moharrem and Barmouda did not have English translations. Since these proper nouns were associated with numbers, such as 1321 and 1619, I assumed they had something to do with dates. As it turns out Moharrem refers to the first month of the Muslim calendar and Barmouda, otherwise known as Parmouti, refers to the 8^th month of the Coptic calendar, which lies between April 9^th and May 8^th. The first question that popped into my head was “why would both these dates be on the same paper?” Upon converting the Muslim date into a Coptic date, I realized that they were actually the same day! Knowing this, it seemed reasonable to assume that 17 Moharrem and 7 Barmouda is also the same as April 15th in the Gregorian calendar. The question now was what year these dates converted to in the Gregorian calendar, since this isn’t written on the paper. According to funaba.org, a calendar conversion site, 1321 in the Muslim Calendar and 1619 on the Coptic calendar equals to 1903 on the Gregorian calendar-so the date on this page is April 15, 1903. Fittingly, this is the year before PUM I was displayed at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904!

Ultimately, this translation does not seem like something you would find on a train ticket. In fact, all the evidence seems to imply that this paper was more like a page in a calendar. So either PUM I was shipped from Cairo with both a calendar page and a train ticket, which we have not yet located, or the 1972 autopsy group misidentified the paper. Either way it has been a very exciting project!

More about those beads

Posted on January 23, 2013 by mollygleeson

Hello fellow readers! My name is Melissa Miller and I am pleased to say I recently began interning in the Artifact Lab here at the Penn Museum. I am currently a junior at the University of Delaware studying art conservation and anthropology. Needless to say when I heard about the In the Artifact Lab project, I jumped at the opportunity to help out in any way I could. Who wouldn’t love the opportunity to work with 4,000 year old human remains and funerary objects?

Melissa working at the binocular microscope, as viewed from outside of the lab

So far I have spent my first two weeks here doing everything from making support cushions for PUM I’s chest wrappings to making impressions of scarab beetle amulets. Currently, I am examining the beads Molly and the other conservators found in PUM I’s coffin and remains. There are two kinds; tubular and circular. Molly also pointed out to me several areas on the leg and face wrappings of PUM I where there are distinctive impressions of beads in a diamond shaped pattern. This has led us to believe that PUM I had a beaded shroud! Beaded shrouds became popular in the 25^th dynasty and continued until the Roman period, and both men and women have been found with these decorations.

Being buried with a beaded shroud would have been very expensive due to cost of materials and labor, and imitations were sometimes made by painting the diamond pattern on the mummy or with a net of knotted string. It is evident, however, that PUM I had a real beaded shroud, which indicates that he was probably wealthy in his lifetime. This surprised me because PUM I is in pretty poor condition and his coffin (which admittedly may not be his original burial case) has little to no decoration.

Three tubular beads recovered from the bottom of PUM I’s coffin

The beads themselves, especially the tubular beads, are encrusted with some mysterious substances and soil particulates. On some of the larger tubular beads, there is a white crystalline substance on the exterior – likely salt. Were it not for small sections on the tubular beads without this encrustation it would be difficult to see the material underneath. The material below is glassy and dark blue in color. This leads me to think that they are made of Egyptian faience, which is defined as a glazed, non-clay ceramic. To me that means that faience is a sort of cross between ceramic and glass technology. The smaller beads also appear to be faience, but in different colors, including this red bead:

As seen in the image above, some of the beads also have a granular, slightly waxy, light-dark brown substance on their surfaces-this mysterious substance is also present in some areas on the surface of PUM I’s wrappings. It can be removed rather easily from the beads, especially with the help of some mineral spirits, and as you can see it tends to come off in substantial chunks.

There are at least a few possible scenarios that would explain its presence.

1) It could have been a part of the technology of the time to adhere the beads to the mummy. In fact, there is 1 circular bead adhered/stuck to the surface of PUM I’s wrappings, which we found after some initial cleaning! However, it seems to be stuck on in kind of a strange location, and we are finding that it was more common to sew or tie these beaded shrouds in place.

A red circular bead stuck to the linen on the side of PUM I’s chest

2) It could be the remains of a wax or other adhesive method that was known to be used by Petrie, and likely other archaeologists, to fix the beads in place during excavation and recovery. As was usually the case, their original thread had long since disintegrated, so this method would allow the beads to be removed from the mummy in one piece, without losing their organization. To compare, we examined some beads in storage that are stuck together with wax-they were most likely acquired this way.

Beads stuck together with wax – note the dark, shiny appearance of the wax, quite different from what we’re seeing on PUM I’s beads.

3) The substance may be related to a material intentionally applied to the mummy at the time of mummification.

4) The substance accumulated sometime after burial.

As of right now I am not sure what this substance is and what purpose it may have served, but Molly and I will be investigating the beads and this mystery further. I will keep you updated as we learn more!

More pieces of PUM I

Posted on January 16, 2013 by mollygleeson

We are continuing to work on our mummy PUM I (more interesting details on him here) and last week, our new intern, Melissa Miller, and I removed a plastic bag that had been placed in his chest cavity, presumably after his autopsy in 1972.

The plastic bag inside PUM I’s chest, before removal

In this plastic bag, we are finding large pieces of linen from his inner and outer wrappings-some of these pieces also bear impressions of the beaded shroud that once lay over his body.

The plastic bag after removal, filled with textile fragments

It is evident that these pieces of fabric were cut away (and some probably fell off) and removed during the autopsy, and they were placed in this bag and then inside the chest to fill this area out a bit after the procedure.

In this process, we also decided to remove the upper portion of the wrappings over PUM I’s chest – they were completely cut off during the autopsy and then replaced, to make him look whole again. Once we determined we could safely lift them away from the rest of the body, we decided to go for it!

The detached wrappings from PUM I’s chest area, after removal

Removing this large segment of wrappings will allow us to better examine their condition, and also to examine the condition of the textile wrappings on the other side of the body, which are now partially visible. There are lots of other interesting, and unexpected things that we’re finding, and other great shots to share – we will continue to provide updates!

Traces of a beaded shroud

Posted on December 28, 2012 by mollygleeson

Holiday lethargy? Blustery, wintery weather? No matter-it’s business as usual this week in the Artifact Lab. I really enjoy my job, so I don’t feel like I need any extra motivation to come to work, but it helps that this week I’m working on a pretty interesting recent discovery-something that we found following the removal of PUM I from his coffin last week (see our earlier blogposts on this).

Action shot of our conservation team lifting PUM I from his coffin

PUM I is an unidentified individual, who, until last week, was lying in his rectangular wooden coffin. He had been removed before, for autopsy in 1971/72 (the details are a bit sparse), and his body has been significantly disturbed, cut into, and many of his internal remains are now removed from his body. Needless to say, he doesn’t look his best, and I assumed that any associated burial items were long gone by now. Our hope is that CT-scanning will reveal anything that may have been included or left behind in his wrappings that wasn’t disturbed through this previous work.

So we were pretty surprised when, after lifting his body from the coffin, we found a small bead on the bottom of the coffin, and then another, and now we have recovered 21 small beads. Some of these beads are tubular and others are circular, all with a hole through the center.

20 of the beads found in PUM I’s coffin (shot taken before the 21st bead was found)

Having the mummy out of the coffin also allowed us to examine the wrappings much more closely-it is now evident that there stains and impressions on the wrappings that show a diamond-shaped pattern:

The diamond-shaped pattern visible on the surface of the linen wrappings

This diamond-shaped pattern is a typical design for many beaded shrouds-we have a portion of a beaded shroud here on exhibit in the museum which has this pattern. You can see a photo of this object, along with more information, on our online collections database.

Finally, we returned to look at some old x-rays (from 1932) that we recently had scanned from the museum archives, which showed that the beads were indeed once lying on the wrappings.

1932 X-ray of PUM I. The beads appear on the film, indicated here with red circles.

Looks like the beads that we just found were part of a beaded shroud that once covered PUM I’s wrappings. THIS IS VERY EXCITING!

We will continue to examine these beads to determine what they are made of-they are definitely made of a glassy substance-probably faience. We are also carefully documenting the impressions on the linen wrappings so that we can try to reconstruct what the beaded shroud may have looked like. We will provide updates as we learn more.

And…he’s out!

Posted on December 20, 2012 by mollygleeson

PUM I is out of his coffin, and all in one piece (well, the part that we lifted from the coffin is still in one piece-as you know, parts of his body, including his head, were separated decades ago during his autopsy).

PUM I after removal from his coffin

We were able to remove him successfully thanks to great teamwork by our conservation staff (we had 8 people, including myself, helping with the lift) and the assistance of this nifty vacuum mattress:

Our EMS IMMOBILE-VAC mattress resting on the floor, prior to inflating

The EMS Immobile-Vac is a lightweight mattress that is used in the medical field to immobilize patients. Once a person is lifted onto the mattress, it is shaped into the configuration required and made rigid using vacuum suction. This was our first time using our Immobile-Vac, so before using it to support PUM I, we tested it on a human subject it to see if it would provide gentle yet rigid support for our mummy. Lynn Grant kindly offered to be the guinea pig, and reported that she barely felt anything as we pulled the vacuum and the mattress was shaped around her (I wish I had a photo of this step-I think one can be located, and if so, I will definitely be sharing it).

Happy with the performance of the Immobile-Vac, we moved on to the main task-getting PUM I out of his coffin. PUM I was lifted out by first supporting him within the coffin from below with pieces of coroplast to provide some rigidity, followed by large pieces of soft Tyvek, which acted as a stretcher. Using the Tyvek, he was lifted directly onto the Immobile-Vac mattress, which we had left pre-shaped – turns out, Lynn’s body provided just the right contour for our mummy, and no further re-shaping of the mattress was required at this point.

The Immobile-Vac shaped to provide support for PUM I

Now that he’s out, we are able to examine him much more closely, and we are already making interesting observations and discoveries. More on that soon.

Picking up the pieces of PUM I

Posted on December 19, 2012 by mollygleeson

I’ve mentioned before that we have several mummies in the Artifact Lab, but only one complete adult mummy, that we call PUM I (read more about him here).

PUM I, our adult male mummy in the Artifact Lab

I’m using the word “complete” here a little loosely, or perhaps very loosely, because while we appear to have most of his remains, and on first glance PUM I appears to be more or less all in one piece, we recently found out that he is pretty fragmentary. Many of his internal remains are currently housed in plastic bags

Bags containing the desiccated remains of PUM I

and we recently realized that his head is completely detached from the rest of his body.

Why is PUM I so fragmentary? Well, his poor condition is due in part to the fact that he was autopsied back in 1971. PUM I’s autopsy was conducted at the university by a group of distinguished researchers who it seems were not yet very experienced in the study of ancient human remains. Unfortunately, one of their first forays into this work (PUM I’s autopsy) was reported as being an “unmitigated disaster”. They noted that the body was poorly preserved, without personal data or provenance, and their findings in the end, were minimal. And we have yet to locate any substantial records produced by the researchers during this study, so we don’t know exactly what they did-we only see the result of their work. Fortunately for other mummies, these researchers learned a lot from this experience and went on to conduct other much more successful autopsies.

But what about PUM I? After the autopsy, PUM I was laid back into his wood coffin, where he has remained ever since; his remains and linen wrappings continuing to deteriorate. In the Artifact Lab, we have made it our goal to remove PUM I from his coffin so that we can fully understand his condition, thoroughly document his remains, and stabilize them as much as possible. Within the next couple days, PUM I will be out of his coffin-we’ll report on our progress later this week!

Mummies, Mannequins and Wanamaker’s

Posted on October 23, 2012 by artifactlab

Okay, bear with me here-I’m going to explain the connection between one of the mummies here in the Artifact Lab, Wanamaker’s Department store, and the 1987 movie Mannequin.

PUM (Philadelphia University Museum) I is a mummy lying in a wood coffin, dating to 840-820 BCE. The mummy and coffin were exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis and subsequently purchased by John Wanamaker as a gift for the museum. They were packed and shipped directly to the museum in early 1905. This is what PUM I looked like soon after arriving to the museum (click here) and this is what PUM I looks like now:

PUM I in his coffin

We don’t know who PUM I was-there are no identifying marks that are visible on the wrappings or coffin. We do know, however, that this person was a man-the body was x-rayed in 1932 and also autopsied early on by cutting a section of the wrappings away from the pelvic region, and determined to be an older man. Each end of the coffin does have some painted decoration-one end depicting Isis and the other her sister Nephthys, as protectors of the mummy.

One end of PUM I’s coffin showing the depiction of Isis in the center

One of our goals this year in the Artifact Lab will be to remove the deteriorated remains from the coffin and stabilize them for transport to the hospital for CT-scanning, so that we can learn more about this individual.

What does this have to do with mannequins, you’re wondering? Well, as most people in Philadelphia know, John Wanamaker, the man who purchased and donated PUM I to the Penn Museum, was a businessman from Philadelphia who founded the first department store here, Wanamaker’s. Last week my mom and I wandered into the old Wanamaker’s in Center City, now a Macy’s. It’s a beautiful building with the world’s largest playable organ (also built for the 1904 St. Louis World Fair), which is played every day of the week except for Sunday, as well as more often on special occasions.

My mom reminded me that one of my favorite childhood films, Mannequin, was filmed in the store, and it made me want to watch it again-it’s been a long time since I last saw it. But only today did it dawn on me that there is another reason to watch it, and it’s related (very loosely) to work: the mannequin character, played by Kim Cattrall, is from Ancient Egypt, living in the year 2514 BC, and the film begins in Egypt.

Kim Cattrall bandaged as a mummy at the beginning of the movie

If this doesn’t make you want to watch the movie, I don’t know what will. Alternatively, you could come check out PUM I in the Artifact Lab. We’ll let you know when we make a move to get him out of his coffin.

Posted by Molly