From the elaborate image on her gilded sarcophagus it is clear that Tamut the temple singer was the Beyonce of her day – ancient Thebes in 900 BC.
As a chantress of the god Amun, the nubile beauty with her dark, flowing locks would have been revered by the lucky few who got to see her gigs at the Temple of Karnak in Egypt.
And when she died, the celebrity singer – real name Tayesmutengebtiu – got the best mummification money could buy, bound in bandages and preserved for eternity with her favourite bling adorning her body.
But 3,000 years later, Tamut’s secret is out – thanks to British Museum experts who have unravelled the lives of eight mummies from the Nile Valley using CT scans, 3D imagery and cutting edge technology.
It appears she was actually in her late-40s or 50s, wore a wig, had cropped hair and iffy skin. She was also on the verge of a heart attack or stroke because her arteries were hardening... possibly from stuffing her face on the temple’s fatted calves and rich foods.
As I get a sneak preview of the museum’s fascinating new exhibition – called Ancient Lives, New Discoveries – I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for poor old Tamut.
It can’t be nice for any ageing national treasure to get spotted without her wig, slap, and support knickers... even three millennia after she’s popped off.
But Tamut can take comfort in the fact that her mortification is helping to transform our understanding of ancient Egyptians’ real lives – and dispel the Hollywood caricature of terrifying monster mummies.
And, joking aside, she and the other precious mummies were treated with the utmost respect and care as they were taken, at night, to London hospitals where scans revealed their tissues, organs and bones.
The data was then turned into 3D visualisations with computer software originally designed for car engineering.
Visitors to the exhibition will be able to view larger than life HD models and virtually peel away the mummies’ wrappings to
understand their health, lifestyles and the secrets of mummification.
They will learn that ancient Egyptians had a varied diet of fish, a little meat, beer, bread and dates. But sugar-rich fruits gave them terrible teeth, appalling dental abscesses and rotten breath. They also suffered from high cholesterol and heart disease.
The scans have revealed amazing jewellery and good luck charms buried with the mummies – and that one woman even had an intimate tattoo on her inner thigh.
Using 3D printers, experts have been able to recreate and examine the amulets without disturbing the bodies.
Dr John Taylor, the museum’s head mummy curator, says: “The whole project has been amazing and we have learned a huge amount within a few months.
“We have 120 mummies from Egypt and Sudan, the first of which entered our collection in 1756, and none has been unwrapped in 200 years.
“Now, for the first time we can see their faces, the objects inside their wrappings, how their hair was arranged and work out their age at death and the illnesses they suffered.
“I’ve worked closely with these mummies for 25 years so, for me, it was fascinating to finally see what was inside some of them.
“Tamut, for instance, is in her case with its gilded, painted head and you wonder if the real person was anything like that.
“We found out she was actually an older woman, who had very short hair and wore a wig to make herself appear younger.
“These are remains of people who actually lived and deserve our respect and we want visitors to make connections
“Anything that helps to humanise them and get away from the old, macabre horror movie image is great.”
Dr Taylor worked alongside Dr Daniel Antoine, curator of physical anthropology, who analysed the scans.
He says: “We chose the mummies to cover a range of different sites and a wide time span – 4,000 years. The earliest lived in 3,500 BC and the most recent is from AD 700, the medieval period.
"We also wanted mummies from different walks of life and occupations.
“We wanted natural mummies as well as artificial ones. Two were buried in hot, dry sand which dehydrates the body very quickly and prevents bacteria and enzymes decomposing the body.
"It is chance preservation.”
Mummification was not the sole preserve of the pharaohs but the exhibition shows how the Egyptians got what they paid for in terms of skill and detail – and sometimes a bit more.
One of the mummies was a man who died in Thebes in around 600 BC.
Scans showed he had suffered from at least four agonising dental abscesses in his lower jaw which may have caused his death.
Dr Antoine says: “They could have caused septicaemia or the pus released may have made the throat swell and asphyxiated him.”
The embalmer who worked on this body was clearly having an off day. The scan revealed the spatula he was using to scoop the man’s brain out through his nose snapped and got stuck at the back of the skull.
Dr Antoine says: “We knew very little about embalmers’ tools as few can be identified, so this was an important find.
“I have huge respect for the skill of those who carried out the mummification process. They could extract a brain through a 2cm by 2cm hole. Their knowledge of human anatomy is extremely impressive.
“They worked in a hot environment with no cooling and bodies already starting to decay, so they worked with speed and precision.
“We have found evidence that they knew how to repair fractures, used ointments for burns and some antiseptic treatments.
“So they certainly knew how to deal with some medical conditions – even if they weren’t great at dentistry.”
Names of some mummies are known as they were recorded in hieroglyphics in tombs. One of the mummies analysed for the exhibition was a man called Padiamenet, aged between 35 and 50, who lived around 700 BC.
Dr Taylor says: “He worked at the temple as the doorkeeper and the barber, an important job.
“All priests had to have their hair shaved off before they could go into the temple, a ritual purification.”
Scans showed two rods inserted in his neck as his head had been “detached”. Revenge for a bad haircut?
Dr Antoine laughs and says: “I analysed the spine carefully and there’s no sign of violent trauma so it wasn’t chopped off.
“It probably came off during mummification.”
Two of the mummies are children. One is a seven-year-old girl called Tjayasetimu who also sang in a temple. Her head was covered with a veil and her face is so well preserved experts could tell she wore her hair hanging loose to her shoulders, not in the usual sidelock style.
The most modern mummy is that of a 20 to 35-year-old Sudanese woman who died around 700 AD. Her naturally-mummified body was found seven years ago.
Archaeologists could make out a mark on her inner thigh.
Infra-red technology helped Dr Antoine identify it as a tattoo spelling MIXAHA – or Michael – in ancient Greek.
He says: “It’s the first tattoo from the medieval period discovered anywhere. It’s a monogram that seems to represent a Christian symbol, possibly the Archangel Michael, so it could represent the fusion of two cultures.”
Dr Taylor hopes eventually to scan the museum’s entire collection of mummies. Just 25 are on public display and he takes me into the “organics” store where those too fragile to exhibit are kept.
I squeeze between shelves and find my face inches from the bandaged head of a man who lived in Thebes in 1000 BC.
Dr Taylor says. “He was called Hor, a priest. He’d be interesting to scan. Seeing the scans gives me renewed respect for these people.
"I wonder how they achieved so much while suffering such horrendous ailments. There are a lot of Egyptians here with a lot of knowledge for us – and now we can unlock it.”
- The exhibition, sponsored by Julius Baer and Samsung, runs from May 22 to November 30 . Admission is £10, under-16s get in free.
