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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Four - November / December 2000

Archaeology v Science: Bahareya's "Golden Mummies" Come Under Fire

Is the gilding wearing off the “Golden Mummies” discovery in the Bahareya Oasis? Are they a significant find or, as one expert has remarked, a “scientific disappointment”? Claudia Haj Ali brings the latest news on the discoveries from Bahareya exclusively for AE readers.

Is it a sensational archaeological discovery or a spoof? The “Valley of the Golden Mummies” in Bahareya made worldwide headlines in the summer of 1999 as the most spectacular discovery in Egypt in recent decades. National Geographic covered the story in their magazine and in a 1½ hour television documentary, while America’s Fox TV aired a “live opening” of a 2000 year old family tomb “full of statues, pottery and jewels”.

141 crew members invaded the remote oasis, spending US $3 million to open the tomb. An estimated 8.7 million viewers watched the spectacle live on prime time television. But with the lights turned off and the cameras packed away, science will now have its say.

Amid the excitement Dr Nasri Iskander, Director of the Antiquities Authority’s local research and conservation centre, announced during a press conference in Cairo that the mummies are a “scientific disappointment”. According to Iskander the remains and bones have been collected haphazardly, making a proper study impossible: “At the beginning of the excavation the workers cut right through the ground without proper surveillance of the area and grabbed parts from here and parts from there. Much later they realized the damage they had done. Even if we were able to run DNA tests, how could we go about an academic study?”

Furthermore, the term mummy is technically incorrect, because so far only bones and organic dust have been recovered, and the absence of joints and flesh has hampered the analysis. “People believe that every deceased from ancient Egypt with a mask on his face is a mummy. It’s not true. In Bahareya there is not one single true mummy.”

Iskander, who is well known for his work with the Royal Mummies at the Egyptian Museum, has been working in Bahareya since 1992. However the official date of the discovery is May 1996. Dr Zahi Hawass, Under­secretary General of the Giza Plateau and Director of the Bahareya excavation, recounts the tale of the discovery: “An antiquities guard was riding along the road leading to the town of Farafra, when his donkey tripped, its leg slipping into a tomb”.

Donkeys and horses have played a significant role in the history of archaeological discoveries in Egypt. In 1899 a stumbling horse revealed a shaft leading Howard Carter to a sealed chamber containing an empty coffin and a statue of, presumably, Mentu­hotep, the first king of Dynasty 11. In 1990, a stumbling horse led to a spectacular find at Giza: the tomb of the pyramid builders.

Some Egyptologists suggest that the Bahareya discovery is being blown out of proportion to boost tourism in the oasis. Is the whole story a well-conducted PR coup? “No comment,” replied Iskander at the conference.

More than 2000 years ago, the oasis was a prosperous place, famous for fermenting date and grape wine. Bahareya was also a major trading point on the route from Europe to Africa, where travellers stopped to eat, drink and seek refuge. One of the most famous visitors was Alexander the Great (332 BC), who rested in the oasis, on his way back to Memphis. A temple was erected in honour of him.

Today, Bahareya's 450,000 inhabitants live on a green island in a sea of sand, 375 km south west of Cairo, with more than 200,000 palm trees, thousands of date and olive trees, hot and cold springs, a handful of hotels, no mobile phone coverage and one long distance telephone line accessible only through the central in downtown.

The site of the massive cemetery encompasses six square kilometres, just half an hour south of Bawiti, the capital of Bahareya. Hawass, busy writing a book on the discovery, sponsored and photographed by National Geographic, expects to find about 10,000 mummies. "We uncovered 105 mummies, some of which are lavishly gilded from head to chest with an extravagance reminiscent of King Tut's burial." Iskander, on the contrary speaks of 42 complete corpses: "You can't count pieces and remains. You have to collect the skeletons and parts first, put them together and then you have one deceased. But a finger from here, an arm from there, or a skull from here, how can you tell?"

Four tombs have been unearthed thus far, the most famous containing the so-called "golden mummies". The adornments vary in style, some deceased wear either gilded masks and waistcoats depicting Anubis, Isis and Osiris while others are wrapped in linen. The five most lavishly depicted corpses are on display in a makeshift museum within the Antiquities Inspectorate at Bawiti. One was brought to a lab in Cairo for detailed analysis.

According to Hawass the results showed that "he had died at about the age of 35, but revealed no sign of injury or disease". Iskander, who led the examination, recounts: "We didn't find anything in particular. The results show an x-rayed skeleton. There is nothing, except the bones. What can you study?"

The science of mummification began in Egypt in 1922, when Howard Carter asked the British physicist and chemist Professor Alfred Lucas to help him analyze the discoveries from Tutankhamun's tomb. The basis for the study of mummification had already existed in various sources. Ancient papyri provided information on the details associated with this ritual. Accounts of techniques were made by writers such as Diodorus Siculus (80 BC) and Porphyry (3rd century AD). Herodotus provided specific information on the procedure as it was performed in his time in Book II of his "Histories" from the fifth century BC.

"The ancient Egyptians believed that an intact body was necessary for the afterlife because the corpse was the dead person's link with earth," write Salima Ikram and Aidan Dodson in their publication, "The Mummy in Ancient Egypt". In the Old Kingdom the process of mummification underwent a test phase, reaching its perfection in the prosperous New Kingdom to produce such spectacular examples as Sety I and Ramesses II. Iskander: "Thanks to classical mummification, bones, teeth, skin and hair can still be examined after 3,000 years."

In the Late Period, mummies were hastily made, without embalming incisions, the viscera were instead removed from the anus. Religious concepts changed during the Graeco-Roman period (300 BC - 100 AD) when the corpses were just washed, stuffed with asphalt or bitumen and splendidly wrapped with cloth, covering the face with a portrait-mask painted on a wooden panel. Bahareya represents an example of the time period, when mummi­fication became a business, with a big market for decorated masks.

The masks found on site are made of plaster with a thin layer of gold, while others have only gold on the inlays of the eyes, chest or neck. “But it’s not solid gold like in Tutankhamun’s tomb,” said Iskander. The mummy expert is sure that the features of the masks are of Roman origin, while Hawass has a different theory. “My eyes were drawn to the mummy of a woman, the sun glinting off her gilded mask. The iconography of her mask, painted with deities that protected the deceased and eased her passage into the afterlife, was purely Egyptian.”

Iskander has recently examined 20 mummies from the Dakhla Oasis, dating back to the same time period as those in Bahareya, only better preserved: “I found skin, tissue and some of the bones in really good condition. Even the masks are in better shape”. The Supreme Council of Antiquities has yet to announce the discovery in Dakhla, which was made about five years ago. A French mission is excavating there and working on a publication.

When asked about the incentive to continue work in Bahareya, Iskander shrugged his shoulders and replied: “I’m not the right person to answer this question. I’m only the scientist, not the politician.”

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