A handful of ancient Egyptian mummies have been discovered with their mouths wide open, as if in mid-scream. This has archaeologists puzzled, as Egyptian mummification typically involved fusing the lower jaw to the skull to keep the mouth closed. Scientists have “virtually dissected” one such mummy, the “Screaming Woman,” and concluded that the wide-open mouth was not the result of poor mummification, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine. There was no clear cause of death, but the authors suggest that the mummy's expression may indicate that she died in excruciating pain.
“The Screaming Woman is a real 'time capsule' of how she died and was mummified,” said co-author Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University in Egypt. “Here we show that she was embalmed with expensive, imported embalming materials. This, and the well-preserved appearance of the mummy, contradicts the traditional belief that the failure to remove her internal organs implied poor mummification.”
Saleem has long been involved in the paleoradiology and archaeometry of “screaming” Egyptian mummies. For example, she co-authored a 2020 paper in which she applied similar techniques to the study of another “Screaming Woman” mummy, dubbed Unknown Woman A by then-head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Gaston Maspero, and one of two mummies discovered in 1881 in the Royal Cache at Deir el Bahari near Luxor. This was where priests from the 21st and 22nd Dynasties hid the remains of royals from previous dynasties to thwart tomb robbers.
The male mummy, who also had a screaming expression, was identified in a 2012 study (also co-authored by Saleem) as Pentawer, son of 20th Dynasty pharaoh Ramesses III (1186–1155 BCE), thanks to CT scans and DNA testing. Prince Pentawer was involved in the “harem conspiracy” that resulted in his father's assassination, though the attempted coup failed in its goal of placing Pentawer on the throne. (The 2012 CT scans of Ramesses III's mummy revealed that the pharaoh's throat had been cut all the way to the bone, severing his trachea, esophagus, and blood vessels.)
The prince was forced to commit suicide by hanging as punishment. His body was not properly mummified; his organs were not removed (eviscerated), and no embalming fluids were placed in his body cavity. Instead, he was shamefully wrapped in a goatskin (deemed ritually “unclean”) and placed in an unmarked coffin.
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“Screaming Mummy” of a man identified as Prince Pentawer, son of Ramesses III.
Public domain
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Image of the head and upper body of the mummy of the “Screaming Woman”, known as Unknown Woman A, possibly Meritamun, daughter of 17th Dynasty Pharaoh Seqenenre Taa.
Zahi Hawass and Sahar N. Saleem
Maspero noted that the shrouds of Unknown Woman A contained inscriptions that translated as “Royal daughter, royal sister Meritamun,” but there were multiple princesses by that name, so this “screaming woman” mummy was officially declared unknown. The two most likely candidates were the daughter of late 17th Dynasty pharaoh Seqenenre Taa II (1558–1553 BCE) or the daughter of Nefertiti and Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE), also known as Ramesses the Great. Maspero theorized that the unusual wide-open mouth was the result of improper mummification (or no mummification, as was the case with Pentawer.)
Saleem and her 2020 co-author, archaeologist Zahi Haas, performed CT scans of the mummy to learn more about who she might have been and how she died. They identified her as an elderly woman who likely died in her 50s and was just under five feet tall. The scans revealed high levels of calcification in many of her arteries (severe atherosclerosis), indicating serious heart disease. This likely led to her sudden death from a heart attack or stroke; the authors suggest that the woman was not discovered right away, causing her muscles and joints to become stiff—hence the unusual body position (bowed legs) and wide-open mouth. Additionally, or alternatively, she may have gone through some sort of cadaver spasm at the moment of death.
Unlike the remains of the patricidal Pentawer, this woman was dilated; her body cavity was filled with resin and scents, and she was wrapped in pure linen. Her brain, however, was still inside the skull, desiccated and displaced to the right. Based on that detail—removal of the brain was more common during the 19th Dynasty, and leaving it intact was more common during the 17th Dynasty—Saleem et al. concluded that the mummy is most likely that of Meritanum, daughter of Seqenenre Taa.
