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For millennia, his features kept a tense and disturbing gesture, as if death had come suddenly and fast enough to eternally freeze his screams of pain. The nicknamed "mummy of the screaming woman" was one of those many mysteries kept by the Pharaonic civilization. Egyptian researchers, with the media Zahi Hawass at the helm, have just unraveled that riddle.

The CT scan to which the battered corpse was subjected in the laboratories of the dusty Egyptian Museum in Tahrir has revealed that the woman suffered from arteriosclerosis , a disease that occurs when the arteries that carry oxygen and nutrients from the heart to the rest of the body harden. , becoming stiff and thick and reducing blood flow to organs and tissues. The pathology, today treatable, ended up causing a heart attack that was fatal.

The deceased, whose appearance has raised countless questions, was found in the royal mummy hideout discovered in 1881 at Deir el Bahari , in the arid confines of present-day city Luxor, some 600 kilometers south of Cairo. In the cache successive priests of the XXI and XXII dynasties were depositing the coffins of members of the pharaonic royalty to prevent them from ending up in the hands of the soulless treasure hunters.

"Our hypothesis is that the body of the 'screaming woman' was not discovered instantly but a few hours later. There was a sufficient period of time for it to develop rigor mortis," says Hawass, a former Egyptian antiquities minister and author of the study together. to Sahar Salim , professor of radiology at the University of Cairo.

After his death, the woman remained with her legs crossed and bent, her head tilted to the right and her jaw loosening , in a gesture that many linked with expressions close to pain and fear. In the preparations for her afterlife, no one could or wanted to modify those features. "We have to assume that the embalmers probably mummified the contracted body of the 'screaming woman' before it decomposed or relaxed," Hawass says.

"They could not, therefore, make the mouth remain closed or put the body in a relaxed and lying position, as was usual with other mummies, thus preserving his facial expression and the posture he had at the time of his death," emphasizes the Egyptologist, who also tries through technology to decipher his identity.

In the linen wrappings that kept her corpse, the first clue was found in hieratic script: "the royal daughter, the royal sister of Meritamen" , prayed the fabric between her folds. The existence of several princesses with the name of Meritamen made their identification impossible. Among those who carried such a denomination are the daughters of the pharaohs Seqenenre Tao (1560-1555 BC) and Ramses II (1279-1213 BC).

Hawass's research now suggests that the enigmatic woman may have been the daughter of Seqenenre Tao, nicknamed the "Bravo," but an upcoming DNA analysis could clear up the doubts. The female passed away when she was over 60 years old . By then the condition of arteriosclerosis was very advanced and had spread throughout the body, from the coronary arteries to those of the lower extremities, the neck, or the abdominal aorta. The deceased received a good embalming although her brain, whose dissected presence is shown on radiographs, was not removed. Those who prepared her corpse for the journey to the Hereafter removed the viscera, placed expensive materials such as resin and scented spices, and wrapped the mummy for eternity in exclusive white linen.

The zeal with which they organized their journey to the resurrection contrasts with that of another of the mummies found in the hiding place, who was nicknamed "the mummy of the screaming man" . Scanning and DNA analysis of this accidental companion of fatigue also signed by Hawass identifies him as Pentaur, a son of Ramses III (1186-1155 BC) involved in a conspiracy against his father and forced to commit suicide by hanging himself as punishment. vileness. After his death, Pentaur received another sentence, that of not being embalmed. Instead, his corpse was wrapped in sheepskin and marked "impure" on his journey to hell.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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