Mummy Mondays: McGill Female Mummy

This week let’s talk about a female Theban mummy that is located at McGill University. This mummy is unnamed, but she has proven to be very interesting!

Life

This woman lived about 1,700 years ago, c. 300 B.C.E. during the Roman occupation of Egypt. Although the Romans had ruled in Egypt for quite some time, some Egyptian traditions were still in place, such as mummification.

Nonetheless, her or her family chose to mummify her. Unfortunately, we do not have any information about who she was in life. We know that she was anywhere from 30 to 50 years old and about 5 foot 3. We can also presume that she lived and was buried in Thebes, but this is still not clear.

The coffin that she was presented in turned out to not be hers. It was dedicated to a man name Tjaoneferamun, who was a sedjem ash priest and a cult servant of the divine votaress of Amun.

Provenance

James probably obtained this mummy from a local dealer in Thebes on February 19^th, 1859, along with several other items. They left shortly after to travel the Holy Land.

Late that year, James’ older son, James Ferrier Jr., approached the Natural History Society of Montreal with a list of 100 artifacts that his father had collected in Egypt. These included:

One female mummy with coffin, one male mummy, two mummified heads, four mummified hands, one mummified foot, two mummified ibises, one mummified hawk, and four small mummified crocodiles

They were accepted by the museum. Although we do not have records of it, the female Theban mummy was probably publicly unwrapped. At the least, this is where her head and feet were unwrapped.

The Natural History Society went defunct in 1925, much of Ferrier’s collection was transferred to the Redpath Museum at McGill University. The female Theban mummy that I will talk about here is RM 2717. The Redpath Museum also has a male Theban mummy and a female mummy from the Fayum region.

Mummy

The mummy has been x-rayed and scanned several times since it arrived at the Redpath Museum. As I mentioned before the mummy is of a 30 to 50-year-old woman, 5’3”. The mummy lies on a wooden board, wrapped almost haphazardly with cords crisscrossing over her body. And again, the head and feet were unwrapped at some point.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The mummy was originally found with short white hair, which may point to her being on the older side of her estimated age range. She also had several dental problems, including missing several teeth.

After she was scanned in 2011, it was discovered that her brain was left in her skull, but her other organs were removed. Though her organs were removed through her perineum rather than her abdomen. Her heart was also removed.

• 

• 

• 

Two metal plaques were found on her body, one on her sternum and one on her abdomen. The plaque on her sternum was probably to represent her heart. And the other plaque was probably to “heal” the area where organs were typically removed during mummification. These plaques may have been decorated, but it was unclear from the scans.

Facial Reconstruction

Facial reconstructions were created of all three mummies at the Redpath Museum in 2013. Each of the skulls was 3D printed based on the CT scans. Each to approximately 10 hours to print. Tissue depth markers were then added to help the forensic artists to reconstruct the heads. Forensic artist Victoria Lywood created the heads.

Watch this video to learn more about the mummies at the Redpath Museum!

Sources

https://mummipedia.fandom.com/wiki/McGill_Mummy

https://www.livescience.com/44607-photos-ancient-egyptian-mummy.html

Image Sources

Mummy – Mummipedia

Photos of the Mummy and the Redpath Museum – https://www.livescience.com/44607-photos-ancient-egyptian-mummy.html

Old Photos of the Mummy – McGill Mummy article