A University forensic lab discovered that a 2,300-year-old princess mummy is actually a prince. The Louisiana Arts and Science Museum asked the lab to examine the mummy while the museum updated its display case in May. What began as a research project on the 5-foot-6 inch mummy resulted in a gender correction and other mysterious findings during the summer. The mummy, known as the “Princess of Thebes,” is not female, according to X-rays by the University’s Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory. Mary Manhein, FACES director, was the first to assert the mummy was a male instead of a female after completing X-rays. She said the shape of his hip and skull led her to that conclusion. Elizabeth Weinstein, LASM curator, said the museum sent the X-rays to forensic anthropologists throughout the country who confirmed the body is that of a young male. Manhein said the mummy was between 25 and 30 years old, the first age estimate ever given. She said it has short, curly hair and an open mouth – both unusual characteristics. The X-rays also revealed several broken ribs incurred at or around the time of his death, which Manhein said is likely the cause. “He possibly fell from some tall building or cliff or was run over by a chariot or some other wheeled vehicle,” she said. Other than broken ribs, Manhein said the mummy’s bones were in excellent shape and appeared youthful. She said his teeth were fully developed, which enabled FACES to estimate his age. Eileen Barrow, FACES imaging specialist, produced a rendering of what the mummy would have looked like in life. Barrow created the facial reconstruction using the skull X-rays Manhein took earlier. Originally discovered on the banks of the Nile River near Thebes, paintings inside the wrappings date the mummy to the Ptolemaic period, a time in late Egyptian history when Egypt was under the control of Macedonian Greeks. LASM acquired the unnamed mummy from the Egypt Exploration Society in 1964. The museum completed an X-ray on the mummy in 1984 and a CAT scan in 1986, identifying the mummy as a priestess. Weinstein said anthropologists made the initial examinations using limited technology. “They didn’t seem to be 100 percent certain back then,” she said. “The LSU FACES lab has forensic anthropologists, and they knew more of what to look for.” While FACES recently finished their study of the mummy, LASM has continued working with Jonathan Elias, director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, an Egyptologist who specializes in mummy cat-scans. Elias helped facilitate the study by conducting an analysis of the mummy and said he has no doubt the mummy is authentic. But he explained the mummy is unusual in many ways. With a typical mummy, the internal organs and brain are removed. Elias said all of the mummy’s internal organs were present and more than two-thirds of its brain was still visible in the cranium. “This is amazing to have so much brain tissue still visible,” he said. “It’s a mystery. We are not sure why [the internal organs] have not been removed. It is possible that the body is of a person who died in an isolated area so the body was not prepared through normal mummification method but was recovered later after it had already dried out naturally.” Elias explained why Akhmim believes the body dried naturally and was later buried as a mummy. He said after unwrapping the mummy, they found four rods of palm ribs tied in with the bandages forming a stretcher. Akhmim theorizes the stretcher was used to transport the body from where it was found back to town to complete the mummification. Elias said another peculiar result from the analysis showed the mummy still had a full head of hair, confirming Manhein’s findings. “It is unusual for mummies of this period, but that may be again because the mummy never went throughout the harsh chemical process of the mummification,” he said. “But we haven’t finished our analysis yet. We are still working on the hair part.”
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