Egypt, 1935. Archaeologists excavating a tomb in the necropolis of Thebes make a disturbing discovery: the mummified remains of an elderly woman, her mouth open in a frightening grin, as if she were screaming in horror.
In another mystery, examination of the “Screaming Woman” revealed that she still had her internal organs, most of which would normally have been removed during the embalming process.
If the woman had been shoddily mummified, it was long thought, this could explain her gruesome expression, with embalmers simply neglecting to seal her mouth before her burial some 2,500 years ago.
A new analysis by researchers at Cairo University, however, confirms the horrific alternative: the poor woman did indeed die screaming in extreme agony.
Sahar Saleem
“We show here that she was embalmed with expensive, imported embalming equipment,” paper author and radiology professor Sahar Saleem of Cairo University’s Kasr Al Ainy Hospital said in a statement.
She continued: “This, together with the well-preserved appearance of the mummy, contradicts the traditional belief that the failure to remove its internal organs implied poor mummification.”
In their study, Saleem and his colleague Samia El-Merghani of Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities performed CT scans to allow them to virtually dissect the Screaming Woman and study its condition and state of preservation in unprecedented detail.
Alongside this, the duo also studied the materials used in the embalming process using advanced techniques such as scanning electron microscopy, in which a surface is probed using an electron beam to create a high-resolution image; and X-ray diffraction analysis, a non-destructive method that can reveal the chemical composition of a target object.
Sahar Saleem
The Story of the Screaming Woman
Officially known as “CIT8,” the Screaming Woman mummy was discovered at Deir el-Bahari, a funerary complex in the Thebian necropolis, during the Metropolitan Museum of New York’s expedition to Egypt in 1935.
Archaeologists have excavated the tomb of Senenmut, an architect and grand steward who lived during the 18th Dynasty (1550-1292 BC), the first of the New Kingdom, the era that saw ancient Egypt reach the height of its power.
Senenmut served – and, according to some theories, was the lover of – Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479 to 1458 BC.
Below the tomb of the high steward, the expedition came across a separate burial chamber built for Senenmut’s mother, Hat-Nufer, and other unidentified relatives.
Sahar Saleem
Found among these graves, in a wooden coffin, the Screaming Woman was buried wearing a black wig and two scarab-style rings.
After her discovery, the woman was transferred to the Kasr Al Ainy School of Medicine in Cairo, where many royal mummies, including that of Tutankhamun, the “young king,” were kept in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1998, CIT8 was transferred to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at the request of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
The Screaming Woman’s wooden coffin and rings were separated from her and have been on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York since 1935.
Sahar Saleem
The researchers’ analysis revealed that the mummy, which was unwrapped and lies with its hands covering its groin, remains preserved in good condition.
Consistent with the way the Screaming Woman’s internal organs (including the brain, lungs and liver) had been left in place, the body bore no embalming incisions.
(During the New Kingdom [1550–1069 BCE] (When the woman was alive, it was customary to remove the internal organs, which were likely to deteriorate quickly, and to preserve them separately in jars or chests called canopic jars. Normally, only the heart was left in place, because in ancient Egypt it was believed to be the source of personality, intellect and memory.)
Based on their analysis, the duo estimated that the Screaming Woman was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and, based on the shape of her pelvic bones, was about 48 years old at the time of her death.
Although the analysis revealed no obvious cause of death, the team was able to shed some light on the woman’s health.
For example, the detection of bone spurs on the vertebrae of the spine suggests that she suffered from mild arthritis
The woman was found to have lost several teeth – likely during her lifetime, based on signs of bone resorption – while others were broken or showed signs of wear.
“Teeth lost during life may have been extracted,” Saleem said, explaining that dentistry is a practice that is believed to have originated in ancient Egypt, albeit in a rudimentary form.
Sahar Saleem
Examination of the Screaming Woman’s wig revealed that it had been made from date palm fibers and then treated with albite, magnetite, and quartz crystals, which were believed to stiffen the strands and give them the black color valued for its connotations of youth.
Chemical analysis of her skin revealed that she had been embalmed using aromatic frankincense resin and juniper berry oil, both of which were expensive imports at the time from East Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and southern Arabia.
Juniper was also found to have been used, in addition to henna, a reddish coloring plant, to color her natural hair.
These findings, Saleem said, provide further evidence of how embalming materials were traded in ancient Egypt.
“The expedition led by Queen Hatshepsut brought incense from Punt,” she explained, referring to an ancient kingdom known only from ancient Egyptian trade records – perhaps located in what is now Eritrea, Ethiopia or Somalia – that exported goods such as aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and gold.
“Tutankhamun’s tomb also contained frankincense and juniper,” Saleem added.
But if, as the use of expensive, imported embalming materials suggests, the mummy’s expression was not the result of a botched embalming, what left her frozen in a silent scream?
Saleem has a theory: “The expression on the mummy’s screaming face […] could be interpreted as a cadaveric spasm, implying that the woman died screaming in agony or pain.
A cadaveric spasm is a rare form of postmortem muscle stiffness, thought to be associated with extreme physical or emotional stress.
Unlike rigor mortis, which can take hours to set in and is temporary, cadaveric spasms occur instantly and do not release easily, which may explain why the Screaming Woman’s embalmers were unable to seal her mouth.
“The Screaming Woman is a real ‘time capsule’ of how she died and was mummified,” Saleem concludes.
The full results of the study are published in the journal The Frontiers of Medicine.
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