Weaving the tale of Egypt’s mummified animals
Not much is known about Egyptian animal mummies, a lack that the SEAMS project is working to correct. In ancient Egypt, mummified animals were sold to worshippers who would offer them – along with prayers – to the gods. These mummies were subsequently buried, until the 19th and early 20th centuries when many of them ended up through unconventional means in museum collections around the world. This exploitation and unrecorded removal of the votive mummies from their burial places resulted in valuable data being lost on their provenance and age. With radiocarbon dating and bandage sampling being not always viable solutions for dating these artefacts, and given the absence of scientific investigations on their provenance, SEAMS has set out to address the knowledge gap in a different way. The project is applying minimally invasive, inexpensive methods to investigate the wrapping methods and styles of mummified animals’ bandaging in order to see if they could be markers of specific periods and places.
Combining old and new
Since its launch in November 2023, SEAMS has developed a non-invasive, cost-effective diagnostic alternative to current destructive methods used to obtain data from the mummies. The innovative, interdisciplinary method combines traditional techniques with new technologies such as photogrammetry, multispectral imaging techniques, fibre optic reflectance spectroscopy and virtual restoration. Using this method, the project team aims to reconstruct the original appearance of wrapping patterns of the mummified animals on exhibit in international museums. So far, data has been collected on more than 60 mummies from 10 different museums in the United States. The artefacts’ virtual restored replicas and other relevant data have been merged into a 3D geographic information system, and the mummies have been grouped into typologies based on their shared iconographic traits. The development of a consistent terminology for the identified wrapping patterns is currently well underway, which aims to achieve a level of standardisation that has been lacking until now. Invaluable insight has also been gained on production procedures using thread counters to assess textiles’ quality and digital microscopes to study yarns’ dimension and weave form. The data generated will enable stylistic comparisons between the restored 3D entities. The stylistic variations will then be combined with information gleaned from archives, which will make it possible to compare the data with well-contextualised specimens and human mummies. “This will provide insight into local beliefs hidden in stylistic designs and allow us to place their occurrence within a specific period and/or site,” remarks project lead Christian Greco, director of Egyptian Museum in Turin that houses the second largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world. In the near future, the digitally restored 3D entities will also be used as references to reconstruct exact replicas of recurring wrapping patterns through textile and experimental archaeology protocols. Through its efforts, SEAMS (a Study of Egyptian Animal Mummy Styles) will create the first ever classification of votive animal mummies based on their production techniques and styles, providing the scientific community with a useful tool for identifying currently unknown specimens. By reducing museums’ need for diagnostic investigations, it will also help them to avoid destructive sampling and reduce costs. “By offering important insights into the manufacture of votive animal mummies, SEAMS creates new knowledge on this neglected category of artefacts and sheds new light on Egyptian craft specialisations, technologies and favoured materials, as well as on the economic weight of votive animal mummy industry,” Greco concludes. If you are interested in having your project featured as a ‘Project of the Month’ in an upcoming issue, please send us an email to editorial@cordis.europa.eu and tell us why!
Keywords
SEAMS, Egypt, Egyptian, votive, animal, mummy, mummified