A prehistoric Egyptian mummy: Evidence for an ‘embalming recipe’ and the evolution of early formative funerary treatments

Jones, Jana, Higham, Thomas F.G., Chivall, David, Bianucci, Raffaella, Kay, Gemma L., Pallen, Mark J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1807-3657, Oldfield, Ron, Ugliano, Federica and Buckley, Stephen A. (2018) A prehistoric Egyptian mummy: Evidence for an ‘embalming recipe’ and the evolution of early formative funerary treatments. Journal of Archaeological Science, 100. pp. 191-200. ISSN 0305-4403

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Abstract

Interdisciplinary scientific investigations utilising chemical analysis, shotgun metagenomics, textile analysis and radiocarbon dating have been applied to the study of an intact prehistoric Egyptian mummy, allowing insights into when this individual lived and died, and the funerary treatments employed in the preparation of the body. Here we present the first evidence for an extant prehistoric mummy that has undergone treatment with notably similar formative complex ‘balms’ that would later constitute the classic embalming recipes employed at the height of pharaonic mummification some 2500 years later. Making the informed assumption that the provenance of the Turin body was Gebelein, Qena or Luxor (Thebes), the findings offer the first indication that this type of funerary recipe was likely to have been employed over a wider geographical area at a time when the concept of a pan-Egyptian identity was supposedly still developing.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: mummification,prehistoric egypt,embalming chemistry,gc-ms,radiocarbon dating
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 23 Aug 2018 09:31
Last Modified: 13 May 2023 00:39
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/68114
DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2018.07.011

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