Eerie heads line Dr. Jonathan Elias’ office. Like a scene from a Bad-B science fiction flick skulls and sculptures watch the Egyptologist’s every move.
As director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium (AMSC) amscresearch.com/ Elias analyzes, scans, and records data to advance knowledge and understanding of ancient Egyptian mummies, particularly from the Akmim region 300 miles south of Cairo on the Nile River’s eastern bank. One of his most recent projects, the forensic facial reconstruction of a 2000-year-old female Akhmimic mummy named Nefrina, is currently on display at her home in the Reading Public Museum in an exhibition entitled, “Nefrina’s World,” in the Ancient Civilizations Gallery through 2011.
Based in Harrisburg, the organization was founded in 2003 using Harrisburg Hospital for its computed tomography (CT) scans, which it does to this day. Nefrina was one of its first, but at the Reading Hospital due to her fragility. As an independent project funded by Elias and other consortium members, the AMSC went full swing in 2005, and began analyzing mummies from other regions in 2007. Their idea was to follow the mummification process’s evolution, as well as to provide an overview of the vast Nile River Valley’s increasingly diverse population.
According to Elias, the city’s history began very early. It later became a seat of the royal Ptolemaic dynasty that produced Egypt’s most famous Pharoah, Tutankhamun (King Tut). Its strategic location at a bend in the river allowed its people to supervise traffic travelling the fertile Nile corridor, and taxation and commercialism brought its citizens vast wealth. Its fame as a linen weaving center spread quickly, and it grew to be a key point along the busy trade route.
As Egypt’s commerce and technology advanced, its population increased to include people from many different regions. It became a melting pot of cultures and intermarriages. Akhmim, however, resisted this transformation, preserving the pure Egyptian blood.
Nefrina, Elias explained, was the daughter of an Egyptian priest, and as a member of the priestly community she didn’t interbreed with any other ethnic group. Based on carbon dating of her linen wrappings, coffin designs, and other factors, the AMSC placed her death around 250 B.C. during the Ptolemaic Period. She was between 40 and 50 years old as noted by the condition of her skeleton and teeth, when she suddenly died as the result of complications from a pelvic fracture, which may have been caused by avascular necrosis or the dying of bone tissue.
The woman was buried with a bag of herbs adjacent her wound presumably for healing in the afterlife. Typically, Ptolemaic mummies had their visceral packets, internal organs stored in bags, reintroduced into body as opposed to external canopic jars. Her body remained fully intact with exception of her ears, which Elias maintained could be missing for several reasons.
“Her mummy provides extremely interesting and important evidence of a caring attitude on the part of the embalmers that they understood who they working on, what she had died from, and were specifically directing their skill to repair that injury,” Elias elaborated. “Her ear tissue has been lost. In ancient times prior to wrapping the body the embalmers constructed false ears for her mummy. This may be the result of the length of time in which her body was left to dessicate. It’s possible that the ear tissue was exposed and either burned by the drying chemicals or attacked by insects, so they had no choice but to create a new pair before wrapping the body.”
Elias decided to pursue her identity further as part of a project called the Community of Portraits, employing forensic facial reconstruction to trace the ancestry and commonality of the Akhmim people. He enlisted Philadelphia sculptor Frank Bender, famous for his work recreating faces of unidentified skulls with the hopes of finding their families, as well as age projection, most notably catching a killer via “America’s Most Wanted.”
The reconstruction process began with a CT scan, which provided digital information used to develop a skull model. Then he employed rapid prototyping, technology that automatically constructs physical models from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) data, which is printed similar to a sculpture of itself. Elias reproduced her skull through 3D printing and sent a copy of the data set to the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg that created an actual model of Nefrina’s skull. He took that model to Bender, and they discussed influential factors like her background, environment, social status, and how she lived (and) died.
“The process is to take a skull or model of a skull and apply statistical mean data that has been developed on the basis of cadaver measurements and tissue developed from a living person,” explained Elias. “Over many years certain standard positions on the human skull have been selected as being decisive in determining what a person’s face looks like derived from statistical data from hundreds of individuals. The tissue thickness data relates directly to those selected spots. There are 34 points that I recognize in the work that I do. Once you have the thickness markers in place you begin to build clay around them and develop the facial musculature in different parts of the facial regions. The anatomy is reconstructed and you have an individual again.”
A plaster cast is made of the original clay model and used for analysis and in exhibitions such as the one in Reading.
Elias, originally from New Jersey, completed his Masters and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago while researching systems of magical inscription appearing on Egyptian coffins. This led to his interest in Akhmim. He studied his first Akhmimic mummy in 1987 as part of an exhibition developed by the Milwaukee Public Museum.
“There’s no better way to get a sense of pathos and a feeling of compassion for others than to go to an exhibition which has as its center forensic reconstruction, especially when the work is as well done as Frank’s. In looking at Nefrina you will see that she has been created by the hand of an artist. It’s a miracle! If people want to see something that’s authentic and has integrity and a miraculous quality they should come to this exhibit.”
Visit the Reading Public Museum, 500 Museum Road, and check the website at www.readingpublicmuseum.org for hours, costs, and more information.
(Images are courtesy of the Reading Public Museum and the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium)
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