ancient egypt

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Skull long thought to be Cleopatra’s sister’s was actually a young boy

ancient DNA, ancient egypt, anthropology, Archaeology, cleopatra, forensic archaeology, Science / /

Scientists have demonstrated that an ancient human skull excavated from a tomb at Ephesos was not that of Arsinoë IV, half-sister to Cleopatra VII. Rather, it’s the skull of a young male between the ages of 11 and 14 from Italy or Sardinia, who may have suffered from one or more developmental disorders, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Arsinoë IV’s remains are thus still missing.

Arsinoë IV led quite an adventurous short life. She was either the third or fourth daughter of Ptolemy XII, who left the throne to Cleopatra and his son, Ptolemy XIII, to rule together. Ptolemy XIII didn’t care for this decision and dethroned Cleopatra in a civil war—until Julius Caesar intervened to enforce their father’s original plan of co-rulership. As for Arsinoë, Caesar returned Cyprus to Egyptian rule and named her and her youngest brother (Ptolemy XIV) co-rulers. This time, it was Arsinoë who rebelled, taking command of the Egyptian army and declaring herself queen.

She was fairly successful at first in battling the Romans, conducting a siege against Alexandria and Cleopatra, until her disillusioned officers decided they’d had enough and secretly negotiated with Caesar to turn her over to him. Caesar agreed, and after a bit of public humiliation, he granted Arsinoë sanctuary in the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. She lived in relative peace for a few years, until Cleopatra and Mark Antony ordered her execution on the steps of the temple—a scandalous violation of the temple as a place of sanctuary. Historians disagree about Arsinoë’s age when she died: Estimates range from 22 to 27.

Archaeologists have been excavating the ancient city of Ephesus for more than a century. The Octagon was uncovered in 1904, and the burial chamber was opened in 1929. That’s where Joseph Keil found a skeleton in a sarcophagus filled with water, but for some reason, Keil only removed the cranium from the tomb before sealing it back up. He took the skull with him to Germany and declared it belonged to a likely female around 20 years old, although he provided no hard data to support that conclusion.

It was Hilke Thur of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who first speculated that the skull may have belonged to Arsinoë IV, despite the lack of an inscription (or even any grave goods) on the tomb where it was found. Old notes and photographs, as well as craniometry, served as the only evidence. The skull accompanied Keil to his new position at the University of Vienna, and there was one 1953 paper reporting on craniometric measurements, but after that, the skull languished in relative obscurity. Archaeologists at the University of Graz rediscovered the skull in Vienna in 2022. The rest of the skeleton remained buried until the chamber was reopened and explored further in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was no longer in the sarcophagus.

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“Screaming Woman” mummy may have died in agony 3,500 years ago, study finds

ancient egypt, Archaeology, archaeometry, CT scanning, Egyptian mummification, forensic archaeology, paleoradiology, Science, screaming woman mummy / /

why is this mummy screaming? —

Scientists performed a “virtual autopsy” but could not determine exact cause of death.

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The Screaming Woman mummy, closeup of head/skull surrounded by elaborate wig

Enlarge / CT scans and other techniques allowed scientists to “virtually dissect” this 3,500-year-old “Screaming Woman” mummy.

There have been a handful of ancient Egyptian mummies discovered with their mouths wide open, as if mid-scream. This has puzzled archaeologists because Egyptian mummification typically involved bandaging the mandible to the skull to keep the mouth closed. Scientists have “virtually dissected” one such “Screaming Woman” mummy and concluded that the wide-open mouth is not the result of poor mummification, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. There was no clear cause of death, but the authors suggest the mummy’s expression could indicate she died in excruciating pain.

“The Screaming Woman is a true ‘time capsule’ of the way that she died and was mummified,” said co-author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University in Egypt. “Here we show that she was embalmed with costly, imported embalming material. This, and the mummy’s well-preserved appearance, contradicts the traditional belief that a failure to remove her inner organs implied poor mummification.”

Saleem has long been involved in paleoradiology and archaeometry of “screaming”  Egyptian mummies. For instance, she co-authored a 2020 paper applying similar techniques to the study of another “Screaming Woman” mummy, dubbed Unknown Woman A by the then-head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Gaston Maspero, and one of two such mummies discovered in the Royal Cache at Deir el Bahari near Luxor in 1881. This was where 21st and 22nd Dynasty priests would hide the remains of royal members from earlier dynasties to thwart grave robbers.

The male mummy, which also had a screaming expression, was identified in a 2012 study (also co-authored by Saleem) as Pentawer, son of 20th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses III (1186–1155 BCE), thanks to CT scans and DNA testing. Prince Pentawer was involved in the “harem conspiracy,” resulting in the assassination of his father, although the attempted coup failed in its objective of placing Pentawer on the throne. (The 2012 CT scans of Ramses III’s mummy revealed that the pharaoh’s throat had been cut to the bone, severing the trachea, esophagus, and blood vessels.)

The prince was forced to commit suicide by hanging as punishment. His body was not properly mummified; his organs were not removed (evisceration), and no embalming fluids were placed inside his body cavity. Instead, he was ignominiously wrapped in a goat’s skin (deemed ritually “impure”) and placed in an unmarked coffin.

  • “Screaming Mummy” of a man identified as Prince Pentawer, son of Ramesses III.

    Public domain

  • Picture of the head and upper torso of the “Screaming Woman” mummy known as Unknown Woman A, possibly Meritamun, daughter of 17th Dynasty Pharaoh Seqenenre Taa.

    Zahi Hawass and Sahar N. Saleem

Maspero noted that Unknown Woman A’s wraps included inscriptions that translated into “Royal daughter, royal sister Meritamun,” but there were several princesses of that name, so this “screaming woman” mummy was officially declared unknown. The two most likely candidates were the daughter of late 17th Dynasty pharaoh Seqenenre Taa II (1558–1553 BCE) or the daughter of Nefertiti and Ramses II (1279–1213 BCE), aka Ramses the Great. Maspero thought that the unusual wide-open mouth may have been the result of improper mummification (or no mummification, like Pentawer.)

Saleem and her 2020 co-author, archaeologist Zahi Hawass, took CT scans of the mummy to learn more about who she might have been and how she died. They identified her as an older woman who likely died in her 50s and was just under 5 feet tall. The scans revealed high calcification in many of her arteries (severe atherosclerosis), indicating serious heart disease. This likely led to her sudden death from a heart attack or stroke; the authors suggest the woman was not discovered right away, so her muscles and joints stiffened—hence the unusual body position (bent legs) and the wide open mouth. In addition, or alternatively, some kind of cadaveric spasm at the moment of death may have occurred.

Unlike the remains of the patricidal Pentawer, this woman had been eviscerated; her body cavity was filled with resin and scents, and she had been wrapped in pure linen. Her brain, however, was still in the skull, desiccated and shifted to the right. Based on that detail—brain removal was more common during the 19th Dynasty, and leaving it intact was more common during the 17th Dynasty—Saleem et al. concluded that the mummy is most likely that of Meritanum, daughter of Seqenenre Taa.

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Study: Scribes in ancient Egypt had really poor posture during work

ancient egypt, anthropology, Archaeology, bio archaeology, forensic archaeology, repetitive stress, Science / /

a scribe’s life —

There were degenerative joint changes in the spines, shoulders, knees, hips, and ankles.

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Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt).

Enlarge / Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt).

Martin Frouz/Czech Institute of Egyptology/Charles University.

Repetitive stress injuries are a common feature of modern life, especially for office workers who spend a good chunk of their working days at a desk typing on a computer. Apparently, scribes in ancient Egypt suffered from their own distinctive repetitive stress injuries, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports that provides fresh insights into how these scribes lived and worked during the third millennium BCE.

Egyptian kings, royal family members, and other elite people from this Fifth Dynasty era were buried in tombs in the acropolis at Abusir rather than at neighboring Giza, which by then had largely filled up thanks to all the activity during the Fourth Dynasty. The Czech Institute of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague has been conducting research at the site since 1960, leading to the discovery of nearly 200 tombs dating back to the Old Kingdom (between 2700 and 2180 BCE). The first human skeletons were excavated in 1976, and there are currently 221 Old Kingdom skeletons in the collection, 102 of which are male.

Scientists started looking into the health status and markers for specific activities in 2009, but it wasn’t until quite recently that there were enough skeletons to conduct a comprehensive study. That’s what Petra Brukner Havelková of Charles University and the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic, and colleagues set out to do, analyzing the remains of 69 adult males of different social status and different ages at which they died.

The results show the scribes and the reference group differed in just under 4 percent of the various evaluated skeletal traits, which the authors attribute to the overall similarities in the sample (male, same age distribution, no physically demanding activities). However, the individuals identified as scribes had more degenerative joint issues clustered in several well-defined regions compared to males from other occupations, including the joint connecting the lower jaw to the skull, the right collarbone, where the right humerus meets the shoulder, the right thumb’s first metacarpal bone, where the thigh meets the knee, and all along the spine (but especially at the top). These bone changes can be indicators of repetitive stress.

Bad ergonomics?

  • Working positions of scribes. (A) cross-legged (sartorial) position, (B) kneeling-squatting position, (C) standing position. (D) Different position of the legs when sitting.

    Martin Frouz/Jolana Malátková

  • Osteoarthritis of the temporomandibular joint of a supposed family member of Khemetnu, the presumed owner of family tomb AS 79.

    Šárka Bejdová

  • Drawing indicating the most affected regions of the skeletons of scribes with higher prevalence of changes compared to reference group.

    olana Malátková

For instance, the osteoarthritis in the jaw joints may have been caused by the rush stems the scribes used to write hieroglyphics. The scribes would chew on the ends to make a brush, and whenever a pen started getting ragged or too clogged with ink, they would cut off the end and chew the next section to make a new brush.

Most scribes likely wrote with their right hands and used their left to roll papyrus into cylindrical scrolls. Writing with a rush pen required considerable dexterity, and as anyone with carpal tunnel syndrome could tell you, these sorts of repetitive motions can cause excessive stress in the hands and wrists. There were only minor wrist differences between scribes and the control group, but the significant right thumb degeneration in scribes likely corresponds to specific frequently used thumb motions and positions—probably the act of repeatedly pinching their pens, although the authors say more research is needed to make a definitive determination.

The degenerative signs noted in the cervical spines are likely due to the scribes’ typical working position. “The head had to be forward and the spine flexed, changing the center of gravity of the head and putting stress on the spine,” the authors wrote—a posture common to many modern occupations. Prolonged stretches of sitting cross-legged could also have contributed to the observed damage to the cervical spines. There were signs of stresses to the right rotator cuffs, which usually occurs when the arm is in an extended elevated position and is common among painters, for example. It’s also common in people prone to sitting for a long time and typing with unsupported arms.

As for the degenerative changes noted in the knees, hips, and ankles, the authors suggest this indicates that scribes may have sat with the left leg in a kneeling or cross-legged position and the right leg pointed upward—more of a squat or a crouch. Iconography and statues from that era frequently depict scribes in such positions, as well as standing. The authors concluded that scribes probably alternated their arm and leg positions, but the head and cervical spine were always in that stress-inducing forward position.

Where’s a good ergonomic office chair when you need one?

DOI: Scientific Reports, 2024. 10.1038/s41598-024-63549-z  (About DOIs).

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