The portrait of an ancient Egyptian mummy who died while screaming in agony has been revealed for the first time after 3,500 years by restoration experts.
Known as The Screaming Woman, the mummy was discovered in 1935 at Deir El-Bahari, Egypt, within the family tomb of royal architect Senmut. Unlike other mummies, the woman’s organs remained inside her body, leading researchers to long believe that her mouth was agape due to the negligence of the embalmer. However, recent studies have unveiled that her agonizing death was the actual cause of her distorted expression. Leading the research team is Cicero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, who decided to reconstruct her face.
Reconstructed face of the Screaming Woman mummy. (Photo: Cicero Moraes).
The restoration results in a pleasing face created through the combination of several methods. Moraes’s team utilized a technique that blends traditional facial reconstruction with a new method based on CT scan data from living individuals. This allowed them to explore the limits of structures like the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth.
Moraes developed multiple variations of the face. One version presents an objective portrayal with closed eyes and a gray tone to avoid biases regarding skin or eye color. A more subjective version depicts the woman as she would have appeared in life, complete with a wig worn during burial. The third version captures the moment the woman was screaming, potentially reflecting her appearance at the time of burial. Moraes and his colleagues published their findings in the journal OrtogOnLineMag.
Moraes expressed that his choice of skin tone could be controversial in the subsequent image. “The issue of the skin color of ancient Egyptians is a deeply contentious topic. To avoid controversy, I sought a method based on publications on the subject, data collected from research by local groups, and ancient Egyptian art,” Moraes stated.
Sahar Saleem from Cairo University, the head of the recent research team on the Screaming Woman, attributes the mummy’s agonizing expression to rigor mortis. However, the cause of her death remains a mystery. Utilizing Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy on the mummy, Saleem and her colleagues discovered that the body had been embalmed with juniper and frankincense. These materials were very expensive, with juniper imported from the eastern Mediterranean, while frankincense came from East Africa or Southern Arabia. The mummy also wore a wig made from date palm fibers, treated with quartz, magnetite, and albite crystals. These treatments could stiffen the hair strands and turn the hair black, a color that represented youth for ancient Egyptians.
The woman’s coffin does not bear a name, but the burial site near the temple of a female pharaoh provides clues for researchers. The woman was buried alongside the parents of Senmut, suggesting she may have been a close family member of this royal architect.
