The Case Of The Daddy Who Ended Up As A Mummy
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 26, 1997
A mummy stored in the Australian Museum proves that male obsessions have changed little in nearly 3,000 years.
When ancient Eqyptian mummy-makers prepared the middle-aged body for burial, they made sure the man clutched his crotch for his journey to the Afterlife.
Still, despite this concern for the deceased's manhood, visible in x-rays, they tucked him into a coffin designed for a woman, said Australian Museum conservator Mr Colin Macgregor.
From January 12, Sydneysiders will be able to observe this example of archaic gender bending when the mummy goes on display along with a small collection of beautiful funerary objects.
One item is the lid of a canopic jar, shaped like a human head. Traditionally, four such jars were buried with the deceased. They contained the liver, lung, stomach and intestines, which were removed from the body to help preserve them for the next world.
So what's the difference between His and Hers coffins? The decorations, said Mr Macgregor, pointing to a depiction - in vibrant blues, greens, and reds - of a woman making an offering to Osiris, god of the underworld.
Two weeks ago, Mr Nasry Iskander, head of conservation and research at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, viewed the mummy which was excavated in Thebes in 1900 and donated to the Australian Museum 12 years later by Sir Robert Tooth of London.
Mr Iskander told Mr Macgregor that occasionally "less important people" were nestled into "off-the-shelf" mummy cases that fit, regardless of the sex for which they were made.
Mr Macgregor said the museum's mummy was in surprisingly good condition, considering that the heyday of mummification was between 1600BC and 1000BC. By the time the museum's man had died, between 600BC and 300BC, the art had waned.
Although museum experts are considering possible treatments to protect their treasure from insects, they have "done as little as possible" to the precious mummy, Mr Macgregor said. It will, however, be displayed in a special perspex case, shaped like a pyramid, to help regulate humidity.
Conservation work on the coffin started in the 1970s. Conservators stabilised the paintwork and the plaster-like gesso undercoating beneath it, said Mr Macgregor, who studied Eqyptian pigments for the Scottish Museums Council in Aberdeen.
The blue pigment on the museum's coffin was based either on a copper compound or a ground glass-like ceramic. Green pigment was made from mala-chite, a copper carbonate, and the deep red was an iron oxide.
Another Egyptian exhibition follows: in July a fully-fledged Egyptian collection will arrive from Holland, courtesy of Leiden's Museum of Antiquities.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald