were exposed, and he wasnât a particularly pretty sight. In fact, his face looked more like a skull than a preserved visage, and it gave me plenty to talk about. My other youthful encounters with the Egyptian dead were from the black-and-white images on the television screen, such as Boris Karloff as the infamous Imhotep returned to life to claim his ancient love in the classic Universal Pictures horror film The Mummy . It both frightened and intrigued me. The rational side of me knew it could never happen, but the notion of reanimated mummies was enough to make me want to sleep with the lights on.
The Tacoma mummy was a surprise to me. I would never have guessed that such an interesting thing was lying about just a few miles from where I lived. Whatâs more, buying a mummy in nineteenth-century Egypt was one thing, but what do you do with it once you return home? Allen Mason kept it at home for a while, then moved it to his downtown office, and finally, after nearly twenty years, donated it to what is now the Washington State Historical Society, a strange item indeed to be found among all manner of items relating to that stateâs history, including old wagons and political posters. Despite its irrelevance, this white elephant, so to speak, remained a popular attraction at the societyâs museum. In 1959 it was lent to the University ofPuget Sound, where it served as a kind of curious teaching and research novelty. In 1983 it was returned to the historical societyâs museum, where it was placed in storage. When Dr. Lyle, a local amateur Egyptologist, learned of the mummy, he put his skills as an orthopedic surgeon to work. The mummy was taken to a local hospital, X-rayed, and run through a CT scanner. Historically speaking, this was one of the earliest mummy CT scans performed in the United States, a procedure that has become increasingly common in such studies.
After joining Lyleâs team, I visited the museum to get my first look. The mummy lay in one of his two coffins, still partially wrapped with his head and forearms exposed. His skin was thin and black, and his eye sockets were sunken. I had seen worse. I had once been taken to an abandoned tomb in Egypt where the local villagers disposed of the mummies they would occasionally find. This tomb had a low chamber whose walls were lined with limbless torsos with the heads still attached; another room was filled with a random assortment of arms, legs, and other body parts. It was a horrific sight that was both repulsive and riveting. I didnât stay long, but the memory has certainly persisted.
Back in Tacoma, Ray Lyleâs examination revealed some basic facts. The mummy was definitely an adult male whoâd died between the ages of twenty-five and forty. In life he stood about five feet three inches tall, and his feet were remarkably small. Heâd probably wear a size four or five in a modern manâs shoe size. Cause of death? Undetermined.
The body itself lay within a coffin more or less in the shape of a human body, which in turn fit inside another of rectangular shape in the form of a shrine. A botanist friend of mine took some tiny samples from these items and determined that their material of manufacture was primarily wood from the acacia tree. Texts on thecoffins indicated that the mummyâs name was Ankhwennefer and came from the town of Ipu, which is known today as Akhmim. Ipu was a major center for the worship of a fertility god named Min. Ankhwennefer appears to have served as âsecond prophet,â a very high-ranking priest in Minâs temple. He lived around the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, approximately 700 B.C. according to the radiocarbon date of his wrappings. Egypt was in something of a decline at the time, being ruled by Nubians, longtime rivals of the Egyptians who exploited political disunity by sending forces in from the south.
Ankhwennefer is currently being reexamined by a project studying as
The Tacoma mummy was a surprise to me. I would never have guessed that such an interesting thing was lying about just a few miles from where I lived. Whatâs more, buying a mummy in nineteenth-century Egypt was one thing, but what do you do with it once you return home? Allen Mason kept it at home for a while, then moved it to his downtown office, and finally, after nearly twenty years, donated it to what is now the Washington State Historical Society, a strange item indeed to be found among all manner of items relating to that stateâs history, including old wagons and political posters. Despite its irrelevance, this white elephant, so to speak, remained a popular attraction at the societyâs museum. In 1959 it was lent to the University ofPuget Sound, where it served as a kind of curious teaching and research novelty. In 1983 it was returned to the historical societyâs museum, where it was placed in storage. When Dr. Lyle, a local amateur Egyptologist, learned of the mummy, he put his skills as an orthopedic surgeon to work. The mummy was taken to a local hospital, X-rayed, and run through a CT scanner. Historically speaking, this was one of the earliest mummy CT scans performed in the United States, a procedure that has become increasingly common in such studies.
After joining Lyleâs team, I visited the museum to get my first look. The mummy lay in one of his two coffins, still partially wrapped with his head and forearms exposed. His skin was thin and black, and his eye sockets were sunken. I had seen worse. I had once been taken to an abandoned tomb in Egypt where the local villagers disposed of the mummies they would occasionally find. This tomb had a low chamber whose walls were lined with limbless torsos with the heads still attached; another room was filled with a random assortment of arms, legs, and other body parts. It was a horrific sight that was both repulsive and riveting. I didnât stay long, but the memory has certainly persisted.
Back in Tacoma, Ray Lyleâs examination revealed some basic facts. The mummy was definitely an adult male whoâd died between the ages of twenty-five and forty. In life he stood about five feet three inches tall, and his feet were remarkably small. Heâd probably wear a size four or five in a modern manâs shoe size. Cause of death? Undetermined.
The body itself lay within a coffin more or less in the shape of a human body, which in turn fit inside another of rectangular shape in the form of a shrine. A botanist friend of mine took some tiny samples from these items and determined that their material of manufacture was primarily wood from the acacia tree. Texts on thecoffins indicated that the mummyâs name was Ankhwennefer and came from the town of Ipu, which is known today as Akhmim. Ipu was a major center for the worship of a fertility god named Min. Ankhwennefer appears to have served as âsecond prophet,â a very high-ranking priest in Minâs temple. He lived around the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, approximately 700 B.C. according to the radiocarbon date of his wrappings. Egypt was in something of a decline at the time, being ruled by Nubians, longtime rivals of the Egyptians who exploited political disunity by sending forces in from the south.
Ankhwennefer is currently being reexamined by a project studying as
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