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.