by Mark Rose
The entire body is as though agitated from the last movements of agony.
The last convulsions of horrid agony can, after thousands of years, still be seen.
For well over a century, the contorted features of ancient mummies have led to speculation of untold pain and horrible deaths. The examples quoted above are from the examination of Egyptian mummies more than 120 years ago. Today, similar descriptions can still be found in television programs and academic writings. "Is this the face of a queen? What kind of terrible end did she meet?" and "a terrible head wound, an agonized scream," intones the narrator of "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen," a 2007 documentary. A photo caption in the scholarly volume Mummies and Death in Egypt (2006) reads "mummy of a boy five years of age, fixed in agony." And the widely covered 2007 discovery of Chachapoya mummies in Peru prompted this newspaper headline "Moment 600 years ago that terror came to Mummies of the Amazon" and copy "Hands over her eyes and her face gripped with terror, the woman's fear of death is all too obvious."
Mummies with their mouths agape or lips pulled back as if they are screaming or writhing in pain are truly startling. Two of the most famous--designated Unknown Woman A and Unknown Man E--are from a cache of royal mummies found in 1881 at Deir el-Bahri in Egypt. When first unwrapped in the late nineteenth century, they provoked the shocked reactions quoted above.
Such mummies, however, are found not just in Egypt but worldwide, in Palermo, Sicily, Guanajuato, Mexico, and, as noted above, in Peru. Some of these bodies were purposefully preserved, though by various methods, while others are natural or, you might say, accidental mummies. What does that say about the supposed frozen-mask-of-agony phenomenon? Are screaming mummies really testaments to horrific deaths? Or are they the result of natural processes, botched or ad hoc mummification jobs, or the depredations of tomb robbers?
Historical representations of the dead offer a clue to answering, why do mummies scream? In particular, Victorian depictions and, later on, film portrayals of the ghost of Jacob Marley come to mind. The deceased business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Marley is often shown with a cloth tied around his head and under his jaw. (You can read "A Christmas Carol" and view John Leech's illustrations at the Gutenberg Project website.)
Applied Biosystems, an Applera Corporation business, is collborating with the Discovery Channel and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities to establish the first laboratory in Egypt dedicated to testing ancient DNA samples.
The laboratory, which is located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, began testing samples from ancient royal mummies from the 18th Dynasty in April as part of a project to identify the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most famous female pharaoh.The initial findings will be revealed in a two-hour documentary titled "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen", which premiers Sunday, July 15 on the Discovery Channel.
The primary purpose of the new DNA laboratory is to assist in the identification of the mummy of Hatshepsut, as well as other mummies that have been removed from their original tombs, and to clarify familial relationships within and between Egypt’s ancient dynasties. This is the first time DNA testing has been used in the quest to identify an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
“By providing this technology to Egypt, Applied Biosystems is helping to advance science and bring our dead pharaohs back to life,” said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. “A basement that was once a maze of artifacts is now a cutting-edge scientific lab, the first of its kind dedicated to revealing the mysteries of our mummies.”
DNA testing, combined with other forensic techniques, holds the potential to bring closure to unsolved mysteries and help Egypt fill in gaps in its significant history. . . Read More
by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted June 18, 2008 in Meaning of DNA
This post comes from the excellent DNA weblog site Eye On DNA, by genetic genealogist Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei:
When I first received this question, I quickly realized that I could probably spend hours answering it. DNA has had such a profound impact on my life that I barely know where to begin.
I guess I should start with my own DNA. As a genetic genealogist, I have sequenced tiny portions of my DNA and the DNA of relatives to learn about the ancestral sources of those sequences. The results have allowed me to understand more about my most distant paternal ancestor who came to America and fought in the Revolutionary War, as well as my most distant maternal ancestor who lived in Central America and had Native American roots (which I discovered from the DNA testing). Although these pieces of DNA passed through these individuals with perhaps only a few small changes before reaching me, seeing these sequences gives me the first tenable insight into these ancestors aside from their name and the date of their birth and death. These tiny pieces of DNA have created a link between me and ancestors who died nearly 200 years ago.
Perhaps even more importantly, genetic genealogy has given me the first piece of information about the ancestry of a paternal great-grandmother who was adopted upon birth. Although this small piece of circular DNA from my paternal great-grandmother is not part of my own genetics, it was a part of her; and every decision she made ultimately led to me. Additionally, it is likely that I inherited some other part of my great-grandmother’s DNA. Thus, genetic genealogy has given me clues to some of the secrets contained within my genome... Read More
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