The mummified head found in an attic belonged to a woman with dental problems

The head appeared by surprise in the attic of a house in Kent (England).

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
01 August 2022 Monday 06:55
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The mummified head found in an attic belonged to a woman with dental problems

The head appeared by surprise in the attic of a house in Kent (England). The homeowner had recently died and the site was being cleaned up. To the surprise of the workers, in the middle of boxes with objects of all kinds was that mummified skull with the front part quite deteriorated.

Nobody knew where it came from or how it had come into the hands of its owner. It was suspected that it belonged to a woman and it is believed that someone brought it from Egypt in the 19th century as a souvenir. This was a relatively common practice in Victorian times, when rare souvenirs were sought after and then passed down from generation to generation.

The remains were given to the Canterbury Museum, where they have spent the last few months on display in a glass case. Now, researchers at Christ Church University have removed it from its last resting place to carry out a series of tests to discover more details about the head.

This is how she was taken to Maidstone Hospital for a CT scan to reveal and piece together the hidden story. Initial X-rays of her already suggested that she was an adult woman and it is now known that she had her brain removed, her teeth badly worn down by a harsh diet and her tongue is remarkably preserved.

The results obtained also indicate that the skull appears to have a tube of unknown material within the left nostril and in the spinal canal. But specialists do not know if this is of ancient or more recent origin.

"The scan provides a large amount of information, from the dental status, the pathologies, the conservation method, as well as the estimation of age and sex," explains radiography professor James Elliott, from Christ University. Church of Canterbury.

The idea now is "to use the data obtained to create a three-dimensional replica of the head and a possible facial reconstruction to allow a more intensive study without exposing the real artifact." “Similar reconstructions have already been done with Ta Kush, the mummy in the Maidstone Museum,” she adds.

“From 3500 BC, mummification was a way of safeguarding the spirit on its journey to the afterlife. The practice was common in ancient Egypt for both commoners and royalty, albeit with different levels of complexity and accompanying richness,” notes Elliott.

That this mummy did not have a brain is normal, but the researchers were surprised by the way it was used to extract it. Traditionally it was believed that it was always removed through the nostrils, but CT scans of different Egyptian mummies have shown that there was a wide variety of techniques.

“Ironically, the ancient Egyptians believed that a person's mind was in their heart and had little regard for the brain. Regardless of this, in this case it was also removed to help preserve the individual,” says James Elliott.