The ‘Screaming Woman’ shows an agonizing death 2,500 years ago

Aug. 2 () –

A new examination using advanced scientific techniques has revealed that the mummy of the ‘Screaming Woman’, kept in the Cairo Museum, suffered a cadaveric spasm resulting from an agonizing death.

In 1935, the Metropolitan Museum of New York led an archaeological expedition to Egypt. At Deir Elbahari near Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, they excavated the tomb of Senmut, the architect and overseer of royal works (and supposedly lover) of the famous Queen Hatschepsut (1479-1458 BC). Beneath Senmut’s tomb, they found a separate burial chamber for his mother Hat-Nufer and other unidentified relatives.

There, they made an astonishing discovery: a wooden coffin containing the mummy of an elderly woman, wearing a black wig and two scarab rings in silver and gold. But what shocked the archaeologists was the mummy’s expression: her mouth open, as if she were about to scream. She was nicknamed the ‘Screaming Woman’.

Now, approximately 2,500 years after her burial, Egyptian researchers have used the most advanced scientific techniques to examine the Screaming Woman and learn about her life and death. The results are published in Frontiers in Medicine.

“Here we prove that she was embalmed with expensive imported embalming material. “This, and the mummy’s well-preserved appearance, contradicts the traditional belief that the failure to remove its internal organs meant poor mummification,” said Dr Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University’s Kasr Al Ainy Hospital.

Until 1998, the Screaming Woman had been kept at the Kasr Al Ainy Medical School in Cairo, where in the 1920s and 1930s researchers studied many royal mummies, including that of Tutankhamun. It was later moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at the request of the Ministry of Antiquities. Since 1935, the mummy’s coffin and rings have been on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

In the new study, Saleem used CT scans to “virtually dissect” the mummy and estimate its age, identify pathologies and state of preservation.

Saleem and his co-author, Dr. Samia El-Merghani, also used advanced techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis to identify the materials.

The authors found that the mummy was still in good condition even 2,500 years after its burial. Research conducted 89 years after the mummified woman was discovered shows her unbandaged, lying supine with her legs extended and her hands crossed over her groin. She was missing several teeth, likely lost before death as there was evidence of bone resorption, which occurs when a tooth falls out and the socket is allowed to heal. Other teeth were broken or showed signs of wear.

“Teeth lost during life may have been extracted. Dentistry originated in ancient Egypt, with Hesy Re being the first recorded physician and dentist in the world,” Saleem said.

I SUFFERED FROM ARTHRITIS

From 2D and 3D CT images, Saleem estimated that the Screaming Woman was 1.54 meters tall in life. From the morphology of the joint between the two pelvic bones, which softens with age, CT images estimated that she was approximately 48 years old at the time of her death. She had suffered from mild arthritis in the spine, as was evident by the presence of osteophytes or “bone spurs” on the vertebrae.

Saleem found no embalming incisions, which was consistent with the discovery that the brain, diaphragm, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys and intestine were still present. This was a surprise, since the classical method of mummification in the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC) included the removal of all those organs except the heart.

FTIR analysis of her skin showed that the Screaming Woman had been embalmed with juniper and incense, expensive materials that had to be imported to Egypt from the Eastern Mediterranean and East Africa or southern Arabia, respectively. Her natural hair had also been dyed with henna and juniper. The long wig, made from fibres of the date palm, had also been treated with quartz, magnetite and albite crystals, probably to harden the locks and give them the black colour favoured by ancient Egyptians because it represented youth.

“These findings support the ancient trade in embalming materials in ancient Egypt. The expedition led by Queen Hatshepsut brought back incense from Punt (possibly Somalia in Africa). Tutankhamun’s tomb also contained incense and juniper,” Saleem said.

But what had caused the mummy’s unforgettable expression? The rarity of the embalming material seemed to rule out the possibility that the mummification process had been careless and that the embalmers had simply forgotten to close the mummy’s mouth.

“The screaming facial expression of the mummy in this study could be interpreted as a cadaveric spasm, which implies that the woman died screaming in agony or pain“Saleem hypothesized.

Cadaveric spasm is a rare form of muscle rigidity, often associated with violent deaths under extreme physical conditions and intense emotions.