A Short about an Unknown Woman
"When the shroud was opened, we found ourselves in the presence of a mummy half stripped of its clothes, and with a peculiar appearance. Her head is leaning on her right shoulder, her jaw hanging, her mouth gaping, and pulled to the right. The chest is lifted violently, the shoulders are contracted, the arms are thrown forward in a stiff gesture, the hands are twisted, the right leg is entwined around the left, the feet are tensed: the entire body is like shaking with the last movements of agony. Is this an accidental fact, or should we believe that at the time the character was prepared for the grave, the custom had not yet prevailed to always place the corpses in an attitude of rest? People were mummified as the dead took them.
The Middle Kingdom tombs that I opened at Gebelein in 1886 give us valuable information in this regard. The four intact coffins that they returned to us contained mummies very similar to the mummy that concerns us. They too were in the attitude in which agony had left them, their heads bowed, their mouths gaping, their hands contracted, their legs drawn together.
Add to this other clues, the lightness of the body, the ease with which the skin breaks or detaches into scales, the defleshing of the skull; the mummy, which so resembles the mummies of Gebelien, has almost no resemblance to those of Ahmos I, of Queen Anhapou, of Saqnounri. It would rather be a mummy from the 12th or 13th dynasty, which the guardians would have removed from its tomb to replace the lost mummy of Queen Meritamon."
Msr. Maspero may have been wrong about this mummy's pedigree, with the mummy actually being a king's daughter named Meritamon and not a replacement for an early 18th dynasty princess, but rather a late Middle Kingdom or Second Intermediate period royal mummy with that name. Little reason to doubt the inscription on her wrappings regarding her name, as most, if not all, the rest of the dockets on the royal mummies are accepted. The princess's grave may have been found during the necropolis officials' recycling duties in Dynasty 21. Her mummy was removed and added to one of the royal mummy cachets. She may have joined the cache of the Dra Abu el-Naga's late 17th, early 18th dynasty mummies before the cache joined the Valley of the Kings mummies in tomb DB320, or was already there.
Why should there not be a late Middle Kingdom, early 17th-dynasty royal mummy mixed in with the New Kingdom royals?
Egypt's cemeteries are full of mummies from all periods, and it might be more surprising if there were no mummies buried hundreds of years before the New Kingdom royals and their immediate ancestors. Why would a recycled royal cache be completely homogeneous to one period? The ancient priests did not have convenient historical divisions like the New Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, or 12th dynasty, 13th dynasty, or 18th dynasty; these dynasties are of much later origin. It was rather a society that respected the "divine right of kings". A consecutive line of kings, comprising a multitude of competing families, today it's a Memphite king, tomorrow perhaps a Theban or Nubian king.
Mr. Maspero's recollection of the mummy under consideration is clearly that, as his description of the mummy has several inaccuracies, including his description of the position of hands and arms that the mummy does not possess. Msr. Maspero appears to be recalling the mummies he received from Gebelien that same year and sometime before his investigation of Princess Meritamon's mummy. His report on the mummy was written some time later from memory, and it appears that his description confuses details of Meritamon and the Gebelien mummies. Being that the inscription on Meritamon may be accurate, with the Middle Kingdom mummy not a replacement for Meritamon, but her actual mummy.
With much certainty, when the 21st dynasty officials opened her tomb, it had been violently robbed and Meritamon's mummy torn apart. The officials would almost certainly have realized, stylistically, that they were dealing with a tomb much older than the 16th century B.C., though I am not sure that the age would have made a difference when putting a royal cache together, I am not sure one royal being much earlier would have made a difference to those collecting the belongings of the late 17th and early 18th dynasty royals!
Recent studies of Meritamon's mummy have demonstrated she may have died of a heart attack, with some suggestion that she died suddenly and was discovered sometime later when rigor mortis had already set in. Rigor mortis sets in after a couple of hours but typically lasts up to 48 hours, as decomposition begins to take hold. While embalming takes time, it is long after rigor mortis has passed. I am never really convinced when the position of a mummy, including the so-called screaming mummies, has anything to do with rigor mortis, but more likely is a lazy embalmer doing a sloppy job, and no one will ever know, at least not for many years after the embalmer is dead and forgotten.
Notes:
The Royal Mummies by G.Elliot Smith, pgs. 6-7, JE61052 Mummy of unknown woman "A."
(Translations of Gaston Maspero quote)- Google Translate
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