Lives of a mummy: Biographies of an ancient Egyptian woman
This project studies a unique find in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark: the mummy of Di-Mut-shep-n-ankh, an Egyptian woman who lived in the Theban region during the first millennium BCE. Her body was found wrapped in multiple layers of textiles, including an exceptional group of tunics.
By focusing on both human remains and burial artefacts, the project Lives of a Mummy aims at recreating a three-dimensional narrative of Di-Mut’s life and death.
Two thousands six hundred years ago, a woman lived in Egypt, in the Theban region close to modern Luxor. Her name was Di-Mut-shep-n-ankh and she was working as a singer and priestess in the temple of Amun. This job and her professional and family connections meant that she probably enjoyed a good quality of life. When she died, her body was prepared by professional embalmers, wrapped in many layers of reused clothing, and laid to rest in a colorful cartonnage and coffin that carried her name to the afterlife.
Many centuries ago, c. 1850, her tomb was open and her mummy carried to Cairo, in the Boulaq Museum. In 1870, she was donated by one of the museum’s curator to the Danish engineer Viggo Schmidt, who brought her to Copenhagen eight years later. There, she entered the collection of the National Museum of Denmark under the inventory number 1048.
Since then, she has been studied many times – examined, unwrapped and X-rayed – and exhibited almost without interruption. Di-Mut has become a must-see “object” in the Egyptian collection, repeatedly changing identities from being a living woman in a vibrant society, to a dead person, a mummy, and now a museum artefact.
In many ways, her arrival and unwrapping in Denmark fit into the typical Western behavior towards Egyptian antiquities and mummies during the 19th century. However, contrary to many other occurrences, the researchers who carried out the unwrapping and diverse analyses kept meticulous records and preserved every single scrap of textile, resin, and other material that they removed from the body itself. Human remains, artefacts and archives therefore form a unique assemblage, which offers rare research opportunities.
This project will explore these different sources one by one, but it will also move beyond the materiality of the now-separated remains to, ultimately, recreate different facets of Di-Mut’s experiences in life and death. We aim at retracing her history all the way to modern times, to better frame the existence of her mummy within the National Museum of Denmark.
We will harness the rich potential of this unique find to answer the following: What were the circumstances of Di-Mut’s everyday life and death? And how, as researchers and museum curators, can we investigate and present them to the public?
The project objectives span different time periods in the history of Di-Mut, from her life to the modern history of her mummy:
- We will conduct a bio-anthropological study of the body to understand the physical life and death of Di-Mut.
- We will reconstruct aspects of her social life through the study of her title and textile assemblage.
- We will retrace the collection history of the mummy, from its discovery in Egypt to its exhibition in Denmark.
- We will conceive a blueprint for multi-modal studies of funerary assemblages in museums.
Our research strategy is based on the different historical timelines represented through our sources: the body of Di-Mut, her textiles, and the different information about her life contained on the inscribed cartonnage case, all the way to the archives that retrace her coming to Denmark and her modern study.
Work Package 1: Lives of a body
WP1 aims at reconstructing the different narratives linked to the body of Di-Mut, bringing key information on the physical conditions of her life and death. We have devised a research plan using combined methods from multiple disciplines: archaeology, bio-anthropology, biomedical imaging and biochemistry.
Work Package 2: Lives of Lady Di-Mut
WP2 aims at reconstructing different narratives of the life of Di-Mut, focusing on her lived experience and social life. The approach will first be historical, focusing on the hieroglyphic inscription on the cartonnage to conduct a prosopography study retracing her personal genealogy and role in the Theban society. We will then combine this information to an in-depth analysis of a person’s intimate belongings: the clothes. This WP will represent the first wardrobe study focusing on only one woman from the past, reconstructing dress practices and body conception, and correlating textile qualities, life cycles, and social status, relating our findings to our existing knowledge of social life in ancient Egypt. It will also form a benchmark study of textile production for a period poorly documented in existing literature. Finally, it will help understanding the recycling strategies governing textiles in mummification practices and thereby assess the economic impact of funerary rites.
Work Package 3: Lives of a mummy
WP3 aims at reconstructing the acquisition history of the mummy in Egypt, to trace the various stages of its examination, and finally to document the different ways it was displayed over the last 150 years. The acquisition of the mummy is a particularly eloquent example of the negotiation between local agents and foreign diplomats characterising the antiquities’ trade in the late 19th century. The study of the archives will bring a new light on the history of scientific methods and inquiries, providing a rare chance to study side by side the evolution of the mummy’s displays and the history of the museum itself. WP3 research will build a bridge between the past realities of the mummy and its present situation in the National Museum of Denmark, giving us a detailed record of the ways attitudes towards this mummy changed across time.
Work Package 4: Methodological developments for an integrative study of past human remains
This WP aims at creating a dialogue within university and museum spheres in Denmark to develop an integrative method for the study and display of human remains. Based on research in mortuary archaeology and ethics, we will use participative methods involving all the stakeholders of the project (researchers, museum staff, students, and visitors) to discuss the topic. Together, we will participate in the current debate about the ways museums research and present Egyptian mummies.
Researchers
Internal
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jensen, Helene Lilja | Student FU | ||
| Spinazzi-Lucchesi, Chiara Serena | Postdoc | +4535325166 | |
| Villa, Chiara | Associate Professor - Promotion Programme | +4535337160 | |
| Yvanez, Elsa | Associate Professor |
External
| Navn | Titel |
|---|---|
| Hansen, Haslund Anne (co-PI) | Senior researcher, The National Museum of Denmark. |
Funding
Cultural heritage grant
Project period: 2024 - 2025
PI: Elsa Yvanez (CTR) and Anne Haslund Hansen (National Museum of Denmark)