The Walters Art Museum has mummies all wrapped up.
Visitors will have a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with human and animal mummies in the focus show “Mummified,” on display at the museum through Nov. 8, 2009.
Ancient Egyptian culture dictated that the bodies of the deceased had to be preserved in order to guarantee their eternal life after death. Egyptians removed the internal organs and brain, saturated the body with natron, or salt, to remove moisture, then wrapped the body in bandages and plaster layers. The entire procedure was supervised by the “Overseer of the Secrets,” a priest wearing a mask depicting Anubis, the guardian of the underworld.
The centerpiece of the show is a CT scan and virtual autopsy of Mery, a mummy excavated sometime between 1930 and 1931 in Dier el-Bahari, Western Thebes. The procedures, performed by the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Diagnostic Radiology, revealed things like Mery’s age, sex, size and cause of death. A lack of identifying markings led to the Walters christening her with the name Mery, which means “the beloved” in ancient Egyptian. “For an ancient Egyptian, it’s a horror if you don’t have a name anymore, because you can’t survive in the afterlife,” said Dr. Regine Schulz, Director of International Curatorial Relations and Curator of Ancient Art. “So we gave her the nickname.”
Among the 21 ancient Egyptian artifacts displayed in “Mummified,” several are animal mummies, which were connected to rituals for the gods. The mummies were buried in special cemeteries by people hoping to achieve the associated god’s protection and support. “It’s not really that the people believed this was a holy animal, but it was an animal that had a special connection to the God in question,” Schulz said.
The exhibit also displays scans and X-rays that revealed counterfeit ritual mummies, which were purchased from the temples for burial to appease the gods. “The temples could not really fulfill the demands of the people, so they started to make fake mummies,” Schulz said. “It was a lot of income for the temple. And maybe the gods were happy with just having the fake ones. It’s the thought that counts.”
Schulz credits ancient Egyptian culture’s popularity to its excellent preservation. “If you look to Northern Europe, most of the things that aren’t stone are just gone,” she said. “It’s fascinating that in Egypt, textiles are preserved, colors are preserved, and still there is so much more to discover. We aren’t at the end of the road; we are still at the very beginning.”
“Mummified”
» Where: The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St., Baltimore
» When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, through November 8, 2009
»Tickets: Free
» Info: www.thewalters.org
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