Cognitive Labs

According to Discovery's Rossella Lorenzi, scientists have used a CT scanner ten billion times brighter than the sun to reveal the face of a singing temple priestess in ancient Egypt, who was mummified in Thebes during the Late period.

Meres-amun, "she lives for Amon," was the priestess' name. Her cartonnage coffin bore hieroglyphs cluing us in to her occupation: 'Singer in the interior of the temple of Amon.' Meres-Amun will be on the cover of Archaeology Magazine in the March/April 2009 issue. (Generating eyeballs, a byline article is titled "Drugs and Looting, the Crystal Meth Connection")

Her position would be to recite hymns, chant, consult oracles, and sing during venerations of the god and use objects including a sistrum (think tambourine), an ivory clapper, cult vessels, and a harp (see image below).


Harp, New Kingdom, Dynasties 18-20, c. 1400-1100 BC, OIM 19474
She is the first mummy to be analyzed using the powerful 256-slice Phillips iCT scanner, in the most sensitive and specific archaeoforensic X-ray conducted to date.

According to radiologist Michael Vannier, Meres-amon was 5 feet, 6 inches tall, where a 'normal' woman's height at the time was about 5 feet. Her features were regular with wide-spaced eyes, and she had an overbite. "Meresamun was, until the time of her death at about 30, a very healthy woman," Vannier said. "The lack of arrest lines on her bones indicates good nutrition through her lifetime and her well-mineralized bones suggest that she lived an active lifestyle." The findings are detailed here. A few other mummies of Late period women show terrible cavities and tooth problems, including infected abcesses that may have burst and led to blood poisoning, and death, though Meres-amun shows only worn teeth attributable to grit from the grinding stone used to mill flower being baked into the daily bread. A preference for sweets and honey amongst the leisure class often led to these dental issues.



Meres-amun was brought to the University of Chicago through the efforts of famed Chicago Egyptian archaeologist Dr. James Henry Breasted, circa 1920. Breasted and the Oriental Institute were principally financed by John D. Rockefeller. (Breasted and family at Abu Simbel, 1906 image, below)



The exhibit is profiled at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. There also is a link here to the full 135 page report (PDF) indexed on the web.

Labels: breasted, cartonnage, chicago, diva, meresamon, meresamun, teeter, vannier