REVEALED: The bone-chilling reason why this Egyptian mummy's face is twisted in a scream
A new study revealed it wasn't a botched mummification to blame, but something far more sinister
THE bone-chilling reason why an ancient Egyptian mummy was buried with her face contorted in a scream has been revealed.
The mummy, known as the Screaming Woman, was found in 1935 in Deir Elbahari, Egypt, in the family tomb of the royal architect Senmut.
Internal organs are usually removed during mummification, but hers were left in place, so it was thought that her mouth was left agape by careless embalmers.
But now a new scientific study has revealed she was buried at great expense, and that the likely reason for her pained expression is because she died screaming in agony.
Sahar Saleem of Cairo University, lead author of the new study, said: “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.”
Dr Saleem said the true cause of her scream was a cadaveric spasm — a rare form of muscular stiffening, typically associated with violent deaths under extreme stress.
It’s a stronger stiffening of the muscles than rigor mortis and harder to undo.
She continued: “The mummy's screaming facial expression in this study could be read as a cadaveric spasm, implying that the woman died screaming from agony or pain.
“This mummified Screaming Woman is a true ‘time capsule’ of the way that she died, revealing some of the secrets of mummifications.”
What caused her such a painful death, however, is unclear.
Using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) on the remains, the team revealed that the body was embalmed with juniper and frankincense.
These were costly, with the former imported from the Eastern Mediterranean, and the latter from East Africa or Southern Arabia.
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The mummy also wore a wig made of fibres from the date palm, which were treated with quartz, magnetite, and albite crystals.
This was probably to stiffen the locks and turn them black, a colour thought to represent youth by ancient Egyptians, Dr Saleem said.
She added: “The excavation notes mentioned she was wearing two rings with jasper scarabs set on gold and silver respectively.
“The material used for these amulets and jewellery denote the person’s wealth and socio-economic status.”
Despite her wealth, the mummy was not identified by name.
But her burial place near the mortuary temple of the great female pharaoh Hatshepsut offers a clue.
She was interred in the family tomb of Senmut, overseer of royal works and the temple’s architect, who’s reputed to have been the pharaoh’s lover.
“The woman was found around the family burial of Senmut,” said Dr Saleem.
“Senmut was a very powerful stateman at the time of Hatshepsut and the teacher of her daughter, Princess Nefrure.
"The family burial contained Senmut's mother, Hat Nufer, and his father, Ra mose.
“Although no name was recorded on the screaming mummy, she was likely a close family member of Senmut to share his parents’ eternal resting place.”
As well as undergoing FTIR, the mummy was CT-scanned, and subject to electron microscopy, and x-ray diffraction analysis.
Dr Saleem and her co-author, Samia El-Merghani of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, found that she was 1.54m tall in life.
And they estimated she was roughly 48 years old when she died, on the basis of the joint between her two pelvic bones, which smoothens with age.
She also suffered from mild arthritis of the spine, the osteophytes or ‘bone spurs’ on her vertebrae suggest.
Several teeth were missing too – likely lost before death, since there were signs of bone resorption, which occurs when a tooth comes out and the socket is left to heal.
The Screaming Woman’s remains are now kept by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, while her coffin and rings are kept by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which excavated her tomb in 1935.
Dr Saheem and Dr El-Merghani published their study in the journal Frontiers In Medicine.