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There
are always at least 2 questions about Egyptian Mummies:
In Life, who were they?
What evidence is there about their lives?
The
Mummies of Niagara Falls have been accompanied by identifying
labels for a very long
time. The style of the names suggests that the labels
were written when the coffins first arrived, a hundred
years ago. Unfortunately, neither the transliterations
of the names, nor the identifications, were correct. After
so many years, is it possible to know anything about these
particular Ancient Egyptians?
In the 1980s, a German television station, spurred by
the interest of a technician from Aschaffenburg, Meinhard
Hoffman, sponsored a scientific study of the mummies.
Hoffman had noted that one of the labels claimed that
a particular body was that of the wife of Amenhotep IV
Akhenaten and the mother of his six daughters. That
would identify her as Nefertiti. Was it possible that
Nefertiti's final resting place was Niagara Falls, Canada?
Egyptologist Dr. Arne Eggebrecht, from Hidlesheim, was
brought to Canada to study the Niagara Falls Mummies.
He recognized rather quickly that the 'Nefertiti' mummy
was in fact that of a man. But the regal profile was still
intriguing. Could this mummy be that of a king?
Many of the pharaohs can be visited in the Cairo Museum,
but the mummies of many others have not been identified.
Around three thousand years ago, Egypt suffered from invasions
and civil war. During that time, the Valley of the Kings
was devastated by robbers, and by bureaucrats, anxious
to recycle the golden treasures of the past to pay the
expenses of the current kings. At this time, royal mummies
were shifted from place to place and from coffin to coffin,
often ending up, denuded of their jewels and fine wrappings,
damaged, in the reused coffins of commoners. Could the
mysterious mummy of Niagara Falls have suffered such a
fate?
Several things suggested that the mummy was regal. First,
his hands were crossed over his chest; now empty, they
had once held objects. Could those objects have been the
crook and flail of kingship?
Second, the mummy had always been associated with a good
quality coffin of the late XVIII or early XIX dynasty;
such coffins had been used by the Ancient Egyptian scribe
Butehamun and his colleagues. When they had separated
the royal dead from their treasures, they stored the bodies
in recycled mummy cases, in the safety of secret tombs.
Two of these hiding places of the Kings were found in
the last century but not all of the kings were accounted
for.
And finally, that noble face! The Niagara Falls gentleman
resembles not so much the famous Nefertiti, as the Ramesside
kings of the XX Dynasty. Could this mummy have been one
of them? The bodies Of Ramesses VIII, X, and XI are among
the missing.
Before any identification can be made, however, scientific
evidence must be considered. How old are the mummies of
Niagara Falls ? Do they date back to the times of the
Pharaohs, or were they people who died during the Roman
occupation of Egypt, or even later? Unscrupulous dealers
have been known to place the bodies of folks who died
only a few hundred years ago into ancient coffins.
Expert radiologists came to Canada to examine the evidence.
Dr. Wolfgang Pahl and his assistant Lisa Bark from Tubingen
joined Dr. Eggebrecht. State-of-the-art technology was
called in too, and the prototype of a mobile x-ray machine
by Siemens was flown in. Jacob Sherman, the director of
the Museum, gave every co-operation. Galleries were closed
so that the mummies could be studied, some still in their
coffins, too fragile to be moved.
The handsome gentleman who was not Nefertiti was now called
Niagara Falls Mummy Number Five NFM 5 . The ancient
body was subjected to many tests. The interior of the
body was examined by endoscope, and showed that the man
had indeed been mummified. Lateral x-rays of the skull
show material remaining in the occiput from the mummification
process. Pahl and Eggebrecht agreed that this would be
consistent with a date in the XIX or XX Dynasty.
The body was measured 1.54 cm, (five foot five and a
half, ) about the same height as King Tutankhamun. This
is a little taller than the average ancient Egyptian,
but it is the usual pattern for well-fed members of the
ruling class.
Back in Germany, Dr. Eggebrecht, in consultation with
Dr. Pahl and his team, continued the study of the x-rays
and tissue samples, not only of NFM 5, but of the other
Niagara Falls mummies as well. Many factors were considered
in assigning the bodies to approximate time periods. The
mummy of one woman, who lived about two thousand, six
hundred years ago, may well be the original inhabitant
of the most beautiful of the Niagara Falls coffins; she
still wears her hair in the braided style of the XXVI
Dynasty. Most of the mummies, however, appear to be people
who lived in Roman times. The physiological information
and dates used on this website are those suggested by
Dr. Eggebrecht and Dr. Pahl in their report. This report
is available, in German, upon request. [The reports on
NFM 4 and 5 are available in English.]
Since the investigations of the mid 1980s, new techniques,
such as DNA analysis have become available for the study
of the ancient dead. No longer is the burning question
whether a mummy can be identified as a particular historical
character. We want to know about the way people lived
in the past. Were they healthy? What parasites did they
suffer from? What chemicals were in their environment?
Did they suffer from industrial pollution?
But the Mysterious Mummy is still unidentified. Who was
Niagara Falls M 5? C-14 studies were later conducted by
Patrick Horne . The Regal Gentleman seems to have lived
about three thousand years ago. This mummy could indeed
belong to the XX Dynasty at least the time period, if
not the royal family. DNA analysis will be required to
know if there is indeed any link between this man of Ancient
Times, and the Warrior Kings of the late New Kingdom.
National Geographic Television chose the Niagara Falls
Museum's collection of Egyptian mummies to be included
in a special documentary about the practices of ancient
Egyptian mummification, titled "Mr. Mummy."
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