THE MYSTERIOUS death of an ancient Egyptian woman, whose mummy became a public spectacle in Georgian Britain, has been solved by a team of researchers in London.
Forensic analysis of tissues taken from the 2,600-year-old corpse has revealed signs of tuberculosis, a disease that was widespread in Egypt.
The mummy of Irtyersenu, or “lady of the house”, became the first to go under the surgeon’s knife in a postmortem in 1825, when England was in the grip of mummy mania.
The remains were unveiled to a large crowd in a macabre lecture by Dr Augustus Granville, who lit the room at the Royal Society with candles made from wax scraped from the shrivelled corpse.
The examination revealed that Irtyersenu “had very considerable dimensions”, was around 50 years old when she died, and had had several children.
Her body was so well preserved, Dr Granville said, that he could identify the cause of death as ovarian cancer. The corpse, which has been dated to 600 BC, had been removed from the necropolis in Thebes by a young explorer called Archibald Edmonstone, who passed it on to Dr Granville to investigate. The postmortem laid the foundations of the scientific study of Egypt’s mummies.
Irtyersenu was bought by the British Museum in 1853, but lay forgotten until the 1980s when Egyptologist John Taylor stumbled upon a large chest containing her remains. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers at University College London and the British Museum describe how they performed a postmortem on the remains. – ( Guardianservice)