International Women's Day
In honour of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, I'd like to mention a woman close to my heart. She was a real career girl, and a woman of her time. She's one of the most popular women at the museum. And she's absolutely gorgeous.
Isn't she pretty? Her name is Djedmaatesankh, or Djemma, as she is affectionately known to many.
Djemma lived during the 22nd dynasty, between 950 and 715 BCE, and was a musician at the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak. She probably never had children, as shown by CT scans of her pelvis, but she did have a husband. Her coffin tells us that his name was Pa-ankh-entef, and he was a doorkeeper at the same temple. Sadly, he outlived her. Djemma and her husband would have enjoyed fairly prestigious roles as temple staff, landing them solidly in the middle class. They would have enjoyed the comfort of being part of Amun-Re's household, in addition to some small wages to help supplement what they could raise. Yet their diet would have been rough, and in a sandy environment like ancient Egypt, that meant a lot of wear on the teeth.
In 1994, researchers performed a detailed scan of her remains, and discovered a massive abscess in her jaw. Nearly an inch in size, this would have caused her excruciating pain as it spread, ate through her jaw, and eventually burst. It is very likely that the cause of death was the blood poisoning from this burst abscess.
However, all was not lost, for Paankhentef had Djemma mummified in a beautiful cartonnage coffin (that's a shell-like mixture of linen and glue sewn together at the back and brightly painted), which would surely have seen her to the afterlife. In fact, if you look closely at the front of it, you can see just that: Horus has taken her by the hand (that's her in the pinkish party dress with the blue stripe and the fashionable scented cone of wax on her head) and is presenting her to Osiris, the lord of the dead and king of the Egyptian gods, while Osiris' wife Isis and their (yes, their) sister Nepthys look on with their hands raised in welcome (Isis is the one with a throne on her head; Nepthys is wearing a palace on hers).
But her story doesn't end there. Researchers now believe that they may have found her husband at last, at the Art Institute of Chicago. That coffin lists him as "Paankhenamun", but some ROM staff believe that Paankhentef would have been a way of abbreviating Paankhenamun. If you look at his coffin, there are many similarities in style. For example, both show pairs of lion snakes -- a motif that has only been found on 11 coffins so far! And when you look underneath, the similarities continue. Their brains were removed the same way, they have scarabs and amulets in the same position (you can see them in the second scan above), their necks were packed the same way -- everything leads to the conclusion that the mummification was done by the same person, and the coffins were made by the same person. But why, then, is there that grammatical variation in Paankhentef's name? One theory is that it's a way of showing he actually had two wives, something that wouldn't have been uncommon in an age where infant mortality was high and some women, possibly like Djemma herself, were not able to have children.
We may never really know for sure, and it seems likely that the husband and wife may never be reunited -- moving a cartonnage case as delicate as theirs is dangerous. Even opening it and exposing it to air is a risk. And where would they be united? Toronto? Or Chicago?
But one thing is certain: the ancient Egyptians believed that to speak the name of the dead was to make that person live again, and we speak Djemma's name every day. So though her last days might have been hard, she is surely guaranteed a long and prosperous afterlife.
Isn't she pretty? Her name is Djedmaatesankh, or Djemma, as she is affectionately known to many.
Djemma lived during the 22nd dynasty, between 950 and 715 BCE, and was a musician at the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak. She probably never had children, as shown by CT scans of her pelvis, but she did have a husband. Her coffin tells us that his name was Pa-ankh-entef, and he was a doorkeeper at the same temple. Sadly, he outlived her. Djemma and her husband would have enjoyed fairly prestigious roles as temple staff, landing them solidly in the middle class. They would have enjoyed the comfort of being part of Amun-Re's household, in addition to some small wages to help supplement what they could raise. Yet their diet would have been rough, and in a sandy environment like ancient Egypt, that meant a lot of wear on the teeth.
In 1994, researchers performed a detailed scan of her remains, and discovered a massive abscess in her jaw. Nearly an inch in size, this would have caused her excruciating pain as it spread, ate through her jaw, and eventually burst. It is very likely that the cause of death was the blood poisoning from this burst abscess.
However, all was not lost, for Paankhentef had Djemma mummified in a beautiful cartonnage coffin (that's a shell-like mixture of linen and glue sewn together at the back and brightly painted), which would surely have seen her to the afterlife. In fact, if you look closely at the front of it, you can see just that: Horus has taken her by the hand (that's her in the pinkish party dress with the blue stripe and the fashionable scented cone of wax on her head) and is presenting her to Osiris, the lord of the dead and king of the Egyptian gods, while Osiris' wife Isis and their (yes, their) sister Nepthys look on with their hands raised in welcome (Isis is the one with a throne on her head; Nepthys is wearing a palace on hers).
But her story doesn't end there. Researchers now believe that they may have found her husband at last, at the Art Institute of Chicago. That coffin lists him as "Paankhenamun", but some ROM staff believe that Paankhentef would have been a way of abbreviating Paankhenamun. If you look at his coffin, there are many similarities in style. For example, both show pairs of lion snakes -- a motif that has only been found on 11 coffins so far! And when you look underneath, the similarities continue. Their brains were removed the same way, they have scarabs and amulets in the same position (you can see them in the second scan above), their necks were packed the same way -- everything leads to the conclusion that the mummification was done by the same person, and the coffins were made by the same person. But why, then, is there that grammatical variation in Paankhentef's name? One theory is that it's a way of showing he actually had two wives, something that wouldn't have been uncommon in an age where infant mortality was high and some women, possibly like Djemma herself, were not able to have children.
We may never really know for sure, and it seems likely that the husband and wife may never be reunited -- moving a cartonnage case as delicate as theirs is dangerous. Even opening it and exposing it to air is a risk. And where would they be united? Toronto? Or Chicago?
But one thing is certain: the ancient Egyptians believed that to speak the name of the dead was to make that person live again, and we speak Djemma's name every day. So though her last days might have been hard, she is surely guaranteed a long and prosperous afterlife.