Egypt at the Manchester Museum

Exactly 200 years ago this month, in April 1825, the mummified body of a woman named Asru was unwrapped by curious hands at the Manchester Natural History Society. Her partially covered remains have been on some form of public display almost ever since. Most previous interest has focused on the biomedical investigation of her body, and almost every mention of her in print concerns either her health conditions, mummification techniques or reactions to her display. Recently more information has come to light about both the circumstances of Asru’s arrival and reception in Manchester and interpretations about her ancient identity. 

Asru’s body, enclosed in its two painted wooden coffins, was acquired at ‘Thebes’ in Egypt in the early 1800s by Robert and William Garnett (sometimes mistakenly given as ‘Garrett’), sons of a former slave trader named John Garnett who operated in Manchester as a cotton merchant. His sons also went into the cotton business – and into collecting. Along with the body and coffins of Asru, they donated a crocodile (possibly mummified) and a ‘species of lizard’ to the Natural History Society. It is not known how long after her arrival in Manchester the unwrapping took place, but such a decision was not uncommon as a form of investigation and entertainment (the two not being mutually exclusive) in 19^th Century learned societies. A contemporary press report describes Asru’s skull and head as “remarkable for their excellent proportions” – a reference to the pseudoscience of craniometry – the study of skull shapes to characterise people – popular among Western scientists of the time.

When placed on public display in the museum of the Natural History Society on Peter Street (the forerunner of the present Manchester Museum), Asru’s unwrapped body was seen by the writer George Head in 1834, who described the scene: “The Egyptian damsel lay entirely divested of her cerements; the colours of her portrait within the centre wooden case perfectly vivid, and bundles of blue bugles and coarse linen cloth in good preservation.”

Asru was joined by the much more recently embalmed body of a woman named Hannah Beswick (1688-1758 CE). Still known to some as the ‘Manchester Mummy’, as Hannah Priest writes in her riveting new book on Beswick, the displayed remains of the two women were contrasted. Asru was the ‘maiden’ from Thebes, according to George Head ‘supposed to have been young’, and Hannah, was the ‘old maid’ in old-fashioned clothing. Subsequent biomedical investigation has estimated Asru to have died at around the age of 60, almost 2500 years before Mrs Beswick. Such responses offer attempts to humanise the individuals whose remains are on open display.

A priestess from Thebes?

Asru is often described as a ‘priestess’ in older literature, although none of the surviving inscriptions on her coffins record that title for her. Although an exact archaeological provenance was not recorded for Asru’s coffins, their style confirms the reputed origin in the cemeteries of western Thebes, possibly in the area of Deir el Bahri, in modern Luxor, and a date of around 650 BCE. Hieroglyphic texts on the coffins are, as is typical, mainly religious and contain very little that might be called biographical beyond the names and titles of her parents. The name of her mother, Tadiamun, is typically Theban, meaning as it does ‘She who is given by (the Theban god) Amun’; like her daughter, Tadiamun is only given title is ‘Lady of the House’ (nbt pr), perhaps to indicate married status.

Asru’s father, however, had an unusual name and important title. He was called Pa-Kush – meaning ‘the Kushite Man’ – indicating that he came from the area of southern modern Egypt or northern modern Sudan. His title ‘Document Scribe of the Southern Region (sS-Sat n a rsy)’ is intriguing, given he likely lived at the end of the rule of Egypt’s 25^th Dynasty of Kushite rulers – perhaps explaining the family’s prosperity at that time.

Asru’s own name is unusual. There is a possibility, given her father’s likely heritage, that it may represent a syllabic rendering of a non-Egyptian (i.e., Kushite) name, but this is difficult to prove. Translated literally from Egyptian, the name means “her arm is against them”—with the implication that it was the might of a female deity, such as the Theban goddess Mut, that was being invoked against the unspecified enemies of the bearer. Of course, why Pa-Kush and Tadiamun chose to call their baby daughter by this name we shall never know. But knowing even a little about Asru’s family background may go somewhat beyond characterising her in terms of the medical ailments she may have had in her final years.

As Manchester Museum considers what care for people and collections looks like, and what the future might hold for engagement with Asru 200 years after her unwrapping, we are asking visitors to her to share their thoughts in gallery and online. Please let us know what you think.

A guest blog by Archaeology placement student Holly Barlow on a humble ancient tool that bears witness to an historic moment in Egypt’s history...

Although easily overlooked in favour of more striking objects in the Egypt and Sudan collection, this use-worn mallet is entangled in an intriguing story. Found at Deir el-Bahri, the site of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s temple, during excavations led by the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) in 1906-1907, it is likely that the mallet was used in its repurposing. The sensationalism surrounding the destruction of the temple has meant that the historical accuracy and focus on everyday objects found at the site has been minimized.

Hatshepsut is an alluring figure, one of only a few female pharaohs, her reign is often acclaimed as a time of stability and prosperity. In the early Twentieth Century, excavations of Deir el-Bahri revealed many destroyed statues depicting Hatshepsut; all the fragments had been thrown into a large pit to be discarded. The female Pharaoh’s images on her temple walls had also been deliberately defaced and often recarved.

The first interpretation of this was unfortunately coloured by the social attitudes of wealthy European men regarding women of the early Twentieth Century. It was thought, until relatively recently, that this destruction of the temple was fuelled by an intense rejection of her reign. This imagining was only fuelled by the dramatization of the queen’s ascension to the throne.

Hatshepsut’s nephew, Thutmose III became the junior figure in their joint rule of Egypt. Past scholars have deemed this the work of a scheming woman unwilling to give up the power she had subversively amassed during her time as regent. The story follows that after Hatshepsut’s death, Thutmose regained influence and in a display of anger and defiance, destroyed all statues of the former queen.

While recent works on Hatshepsut have reimagined her as the deserving and successful pharaoh she was, the allure of a ‘good story’ has often overshadowed the truth. Ancient Egypt saw many pharaohs and with them, many statues, temples and building programs. Leaving these statues of, and references to, dead pharaohs intact was believed to preserve their spiritual presence, meaning that new monuments in the area would not be as ritually powerful. More simply, statues were often destroyed to harvest materials to reuse in new structures now the old pharaoh’s monuments were in some way obsolete.

Resisting the sensationalism often attached to Ancient Egypt allows a true appreciation of the mundane elements of life hiding behind the history of elite individuals. The role of the humble mallet in the repurposing of old stone is an important example of how mundane ideas, objects and people prop up the famous stories of Ancient Egypt.

Focusing on familiar, more common objects can often facilitate a more human connection with ancient societies. One of the most beautiful elements of the mallet is its handle. Repeated use and handling by a workman over time has left the wood polished and shiny, remaining so more than three thousand years later. This polished finish suggests the mallet was heavily used, and yet it appears as if it was simply dropped one day three thousand years ago and rediscovered unchanged in modern times. The ability to connect with common objects such as the mallet is enhanced by the fact that often, a lot of them still take the same form, a stone mason’s mallet looks almost identical now to three thousand years ago. While modern and ancient Egyptian stone masons may be separated by language, region and, before all else, time, their shared use of an everyday object connects the two.

Many other everyday objects such as bowls, socks, toys and cups are featured in Manchester’s Egypt and Sudan collections. It is important to not overlook either these objects or the reality of the historical stories they feature in if one wants to feel a genuine affinity with the ancient past.

Guest blog by Archaeology placement student Amy Worrell on a very practical religious object…

I have been lucky enough to spend four weeks of my summer as an intern for the Manchester Museum, working in close proximity to thousands of artefacts belonging to the Egypt and Sudan collections, many of which even predate the eminent Pharaonic period that we all know so well. During my placement I have personally handled a large and diverse quantity of objects, from ancient Sudanese arrowheads to intricately carved limestone stelae from New Kingdom Egypt. Amongst these, probably the most remarkable artefact to my mind is a small tablet created in honour of the god Ptah, the creator of the cosmos.

The tablet, known in the Museum’s catalogue as object no. 4906, is at first easily missed due to its small size, measuring only ten centimetres in length and just short of eight centimetres in width. However, a closer look at the object reveals some intrigues: on its surface a message in intricate hieratic reads: ‘Ptah, the hearer of petitions.’ The term ‘hearer’ here is clearly meant literally: a pair of detailed and comparatively large ears frames the message. The mention of Ptah here singles out the stela as one of considerable religious significance. At the bottom of the piece the maker’s-mark is found: ‘Made by Amen-Mes.’

The period
Detailed dating analyses have revealed that this unique piece was crafted circa 1450 B.C., aligning in Egyptian history to the reign of the warrior-pharaoh Thutmose III which took place in the middle part of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The fact that we have such a source from this period is interesting, given that the Eighteenth Dynasty has garnered especial renown in recent years, to the point that it has been lauded as the ‘golden age’ of ancient Egyptian chronology. Indeed, Thutmose III himself is largely to thank for the period’s extensive wealth and prosperity, since it was he who insisted on increasing the rate at which Egypt conducted military campaigns abroad. In particular, he is credited with the detriment of Mitanni, a neighbouring power with its roots in north-eastern Syria which at the time had influence over much of the Levant. For more than twenty years he made extensive military campaigns throughout the Levant; from this region Egypt found much prosperity based on the inordinate amounts of fine spoils that they seized. For instance, from the town of Megiddo in northern Palestine the Egyptian forces seized as many as 25,000 animals, 894 chariots, and 200 suits of armour amongst other goods.

Ptah

Object 4906, as I briefly highlighted above, brings about a significant question concerning the identity and noteworthiness of the named ‘Ptah’. Most visitors to museums with large Egyptian collections may be familiar with Ptah-figurines – the Museum’s own object no. 1971.30 (above) is highlighted. Ptah is usually depicted in indigenous art as a human male, though sculptures of dwarf-Ptahs also exist. In his most recognisable human form, he is represented wearing a tight skullcap and clutching a sceptre called a was in his hands, with the was itself being a symbol of dominance. A long beard also forms part of his image from the Middle Kingdom onwards. His image has been represented almost since the dawn of Pharaonic rule, with the earliest depictions of his likeness found on pottery dated to the First Dynasty.

In Egyptian mythology Ptah maintains a key image – he is credited with the creation of the universe and of the Ennead. In his Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods, George Hart illustrates him as ‘the smith and sculptor of mankind’, which further illuminates his chief importance. Indeed, his position as a sculptor is significant to the interpretation of the limestone stela 4906: as a craftsman himself. Ptah holds a crucial role as the patron god of craftsmen, including Amen-Mes.

As I have already stated, the stela honours Ptah as ‘the hearer of petitions’. This is in reference to one of Ptah’s most chief roles – he retains the title mesedjer sedjem, ‘the ear that hears’. This suggests that religiously he was responsible for attending to the requests of his worshippers and may have carried out wishes on their behalf.

Other stelae
Object 4906, though still quite unique, is not the only tablet of its like. Other ear stelae have been discovered, with the Museum having three other similar limestone blocks featuring ears: objects 4907, 4908, and 4909 (below). All of these have been dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty, which may be due to the fact that most of the dynasty was centred in Memphis, the primary seat of Ptah. Object 4909 has as many as 386 ear carvings on its surface!

After something of hiatus, we return to blogging with reports from our Archaeology Summer Placement student. First up, Sonia Prakash, on some highlights of the time spent in the museum in July!

Hi everyone! My name’s Sonia and I’ve just begun my third year studying Classics and Egyptology at the University of Manchester. I have had such a fantastic time doing this placement with Campbell as it really gave me a flavour of the wide range of work that goes on at museums.

A key highlight of mine would have to be sorting through correspondence from the early 1900’s. Although I have some previous experience of transcribing, I found this to be quite a challenging task as a lot of the handwriting was difficult to understand (especially Petrie’s!). However, it was incredibly rewarding after having deciphered a letter, especially if it revealed interesting information. A particularly exciting letter was one sent by W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) in which he invited the Manchester Museum to support him in establishing the Egyptian Research Account. Here he wished to promote scientific research in Egypt and allow students to take up their own original research. Since there was no British School of Archaeology in Egypt, Petrie expressed the need for a more definite Archaeological School to make excavations, the supply of materials and funds easier to acquire. This gave me a valuable insight into what Egyptology was like at the time, how it developed, and what a significant role the Manchester Museum played in the evolution of the field. There were also a number of peculiar letters, such as one from a costume shop owner who wrote to the museum asking them to assess some objects he was in possession of and to let him know if they were indeed genuine artefacts. However, when looking at his drawings (below), they appeared to simply be replicas. Another fascinating find was an original seal from the Egypt Excavation Fund – now known as the Egypt Exploration Society (where I currently volunteer).

Towards the end of the placement, we spent the majority of our time in the organic stores sorting through and cataloguing paintings. The Manchester Museum’s collection of Nina and Norman de Garis Davies paintings was especially exciting as it gave us an opportunity to decipher hieroglyphs, analyse small details and decode the artwork. These paintings were made by a married couple of illustrators who documented tomb paintings from the Theban Necropolis. One of the most impressive paintings comes from Tomb 51 of Userhet called Neferhabef, which displays him wearing a leopard garment, an elaborate usekh collar and bearing an offering cup. Analysing these paintings was a great opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge learnt at university in a sort of puzzle-solving activity.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Manchester Museum as it was a chance to fully immerse myself in Egyptology and museum work. A huge thank you to Campbell and the other students for making this such an enjoyable placement!

Our international touring exhibition ‘Golden Mummies of Egypt’ returns to Manchester Museum this week, and presents a unique opportunity to display and discuss our collections.

Naturally, an exhibition which features mummified remains prompts discussion about the ethics of their display. Debate on the subject is not new but has attended the display of Egyptian mummified people at least since the first Western encounters with them in the 17^th Century. Manchester Museum itself has been the centre of consideration of the subject since it chose to cover some remains to prompt discussion in connection with an exhibition on ‘Lindow Man’, Iron Age remains preserved in a peat bog, in 2008.

Unlike the previous venues for ‘Golden Mummies’ in the US and China, we have decided to edit out all images of human remains derived from CT-scans and X-rays from the final Manchester showing. Digital interpretation now focuses solely on the outer decoration and materials used in the mummification ritual, one that was more about transformation of the deceased into a divine being than simply about preservation of the body.

By doing this, the exhibition resists the urge to look inside – the default expectation of recent exhibitions featuring mummified human remains but one that was never anticipated by ancient people. Instead, ‘Golden Mummies’ addresses the intention rather than the effect of the ritual of mummification, and focuses on the transformative imagery on the decorated exterior of carefully wrapped bodies. From the earliest identifiable depictions of gods, the wrapped, shrouded form has indicated (and imparted) divine status. Usually, Egyptology describes gods like Osiris and Ptah as ‘mummiform’ – when in fact the shrouded forms of mummified bodies imitate images of gods. These amorphous forms subsume individual human characteristics, and create a divine, ancestral image – an effigy for eternity.

Research that enquires into preservation techniques and palaeopathology – the study of ancient disease – has long fascinated people. But by narrowing in on the medical history of mummified individuals, this interpretation characterises the dead individual in terms of their illnesses, the identification of which is much more contested and subjective than many non-specialists realise.

When understood as transformation of a human body into a divine image, mummification actively denies these human frailties. Texts and images repeatedly assert that the (elite) dead have become something more than human, impervious to change, divine and therefore without imperfections.

This generically god-like, and mostly androgenous, face is what appears in countless plaster-and-linen masks; these were mass-produced and subsume individual identity into a standardised – even hieroglyphic – vision of an eternal face or ‘head of mystery’, to quote from spell 151 of the Book of the Dead.

Roman Period painted wooden panels are often held up as if, by contrast, they are snapshots of reality – a definitive break from the supposedly stiff and caricatured form of Pharaonic-style mask. Yet if – as seems likely – most were painted posthumously, then these painted ‘portraits’ are no simple reflections of what people looked like in life. At best, they are highly stylised approximations – much as we might want these to be ‘the way people actually looked’. Reference to a certain Roman Emperor’s hairstyle is often used to date these images – although emperors were themselves deified, providing a further divine model to imitate. These lifelike images are, therefore, not less ‘godly’ than the Pharaonic-style masks.

Unlike in Pharaonic times, there is evidence that wrapped bodies with panel paintings and masks were placed on selective display for a period perhaps up to several years after funeral rituals. Although the archaeologist Flinders Petrie assumed this to be in a domestic context, dedicated sacred spaces seem more likely. This kind of direct interaction with the dead – present as ancestors – is common in many cultures, although we are often unfamiliar with such practices in the West.

The unwrapped mummified body of a woman named Asru remains on display in our Egypt and Sudan gallery, as she has for almost 200 years. She is covered in ancient linen from collar to feet, as are the royal mummies at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo. Over the next few months we will be consulting with our audiences about how we might approach the display of Asru’s remains in future.