As I stood on the threshold of the tomb’s side chamber the torch cut through the blackness in front of me, lighting up three mummified faces in turn. And what serene and dignified faces they were – it was impossible not to feel apologetic for intruding in such an abrupt manner. Just as the sun god’s life-giving rays were thought to penetrate the darkest recesses of the Underworld and resurrect all they touched, the torchlight fell upon each one in turn, and myth and reality briefly seemed to merge. It was a moment I’d thought would never come.
But there was little time to stand and stare. The headman was keen to continue removing the rest of the wall in time for the arrival of his boss, and from the animated activity going on behind us it was clear that Egypt’s head of antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, and his entourage were fast approaching up the Valley. This posed something of a dilemma. Should I tear myself away from the three mummies and go up to the tomb entrance to await his arrival, or should I stay put? What was the protocol? Fortunately the decision was taken out of my hands when the growing buzz of conversation and noise of footsteps heralded his imminent arrival. Wearing his trademark hat, he emerged into the burial chamber surrounded by a crowd of staff, inspectors and his ‘people’.
After the standard introductions and handshakes we waited while the workmen removed the last of the bricks. Then Dr Hawass gestured me forward.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘after you.’
Although I longed to accept his courteous invitation, something stopped me. After all, who was I to take precedence? ‘No, no, after you,’ I heard myself say.
Climbing over the rubble-strewn threshold, he disappeared momentarily into the darkness.
‘Can you see them?’ I asked, craning forward.
‘Yes, all of them.’
Remembering their faces, I couldn’t help remarking how beautiful they were.
‘Yes,’ he agreed as he looked round with a torch, taking in the sight.
‘Do you want to come in?’ he asked, extending his hand out through the entrance to help me.
As I climbed very slowly into the chamber, one of very few people to have been given this privilege, I was aware that one false move could prove disastrous. The bodies lay very close to the entrance and I didn’t dare imagine what any accidental clumsiness of my great desert boots could do to such precious remains. Not only that, but the moment was being preserved for posterity by a film crew – imagine the headlines.
I made it into the small chamber, and as I gazed down on the three bodies it was immediately obvious that they were royal. The mummy nearest to us was an adult woman, the so-called Elder Woman whose noble profile made me feel as though we’d been granted an audience. She looked just as she had in the black-and-white photograph taken almost a century before, her long hair streaming down and her left hand still clutching a long-vanished sceptre which had once lain across her chest. Despite the extensive damage to her torso, she remained in amazing condition as a superb example of the embalmer’s art.
Clearly impressed, Dr Hawass looked closely at the Elder Woman. ‘The face is very impressive’, he remarked, agreeing that it was also a very proud face. Then, pointing to the slightly wrinkled skin on her face, he commented that she must have been quite old at death, unlike the young boy at her side. Still fresh-faced and incredibly appealing, with his thick sidelock of hair cascading around the right side of his head, could he really be a son of Amenhotep II, as so many thought? And finally there she was, the enigmatic Younger Woman, at the end of the row on the other side of a boy. But who was she?
Face to face with her at last, I could see nothing to make me doubt my original belief that she might well be one of the most important of all Egyptians. As I stared at her, trying to take in every detail, I had to force myself to remain clear-headed and objective. This, despite all the emotions spinning through my head, not to mention the cameras, able to catch every nuance, every gesture and, I could swear, everything I was thinking.
She was so like that famous piece of sculpture – the resemblance was quite extraordinary. But before I could voice my thoughts I noticed that something was not quite right. Looking down at her, I could see no sign of the bent right arm that Smith had clearly described on his visit of 1907. Instead, beside the body lay an extended, handless limb. What was going on? If her right arm had not in fact been bent up in the traditional pose of a pharaoh this certainly detracted from the idea that she could have ruled as king. Perhaps the body wasn’t hers after all. I was engulfed in a wave of disappointment.
Then I remembered that there were other clues. Whoever this woman was, she had been buried with a short wig, most likely set in the distinctive Nubian style. Across her smoothly shaven head was the clear impression, even more visible than it had been on the old photograph, of something having once fitted tightly across her brow – a crown, perhaps? All these were clues pointing to an Amarna female, but to which one? Was she one of Nefertiti’s daughters? Or a daughter of Tiy and Amenhotep III? Or someone else altogether?
As I attempted to work through all the possibilities and permutations, I realised that a lot more scientific evidence would be necessary before we could find out exactly who this woman was. I needed to know how old she was, how she had died, how she had been mummified and if she was related to the other two, both of whom I also wanted to know much more about. Unable to provide the answers myself in such a short space of time, I would need to ask the experts.
The temperature in the small chamber had passed 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with humidity running at 90 per cent. So when the archaeologist Arthur Weigall had described the ‘Turkish-bath like’ temperatures while he was working in the Valley’s tombs he had certainly not been exaggerating. Dr Hawass adjusted his hat and tissues were passed through the gap in the wall in a vain attempt to stem the tide of perspiration as we discussed the three mummies further.
When the time came for him to leave I was given permission to remain there with the inspectors and film crew until the end of the day, when the wall would have to be sealed up again. That gave me a few more hours – this time with powerful lighting, tape measures, camera, magnifying glass and the skills of leading mummification specialist and archaeological chemist Dr Stephen Buckley.
Although we were not allowed to touch the mummies we were allowed to study them as closely as possible, which often meant only a few inches away. I was glad I’d remembered to pack face masks – a good idea given the thick layer of grey dust on each of them, and we didn’t want to contaminate them by breathing on them either.
I settled down on the hard, bumpy stone floor which put me on the same level as the bodies, each laid out with its legs pointing down to the space just below the entrance. They still lay on the wooden boards that Loret had made for them back in 1898, the boards’ padded covering far more suitable than the bare stone floor on which the three had originally been left and where I now sat. Not the most comfortable place to spend eternity, I had to admit.
When Maspero ordered Carter to display the three to the public he had placed a small wooden trestle beneath the top of Loret’s boards which explained the mummies’ semi-reclining position. With the lighting rigged up – another debt to Carter, who had brought electric light to the Valley exactly a century before – Stephen was able to begin his detailed examination of the mummification methods used on the three bodies. And while he looked for any similarities in embalming techniques, I was able to get down to what I love best. Pulling out my magnifying glass, I started to scrutinise their hairstyles.
Beginning with the Elder Woman, identified in the 1970s as Queen Tiy, I examined her wonderful long wavy brown hair, falling from a centre parting to hang in small curls about her shoulders. Just as I’d been told back in 1990 at the Valley of the Kings conference her hair was indeed all her own, with no evidence of any false braids having been tucked in to pad it out. Yet I did wonder about the waves. They seemed too wide to have been made with the usual small bronze tong-like instruments, and the effect may have been created by plaiting the hair when wet and loosening it once dry, the same style found in many of the tomb scenes of Amenhotep III’s courtiers.
In the strong electric light the hair also had a definite red sheen, almost a glow, and whilst only dye analysis could give a conclusive answer it may well have been achieved with a henna rinse applied by the royal hairdresser. Knowing from personal experience just how messy this stuff is to apply, I tried to imagine the great queen in life, impatiently sitting on her gilded chair while the gloopy green mixture was applied to her hair. And then there amongst the tresses, right at the front above her right eyebrow, was the empty egg case of a head louse. The great queen, consort of the sun king and icon of royal style, had suffered from head lice, although this perhaps was to be expected, given the fact that it was her own hair.
Beneath her crowning glory, the Elder Woman’s wonderfully imperious, indeed proud, face had great bone structure. The dark brown mummification resins applied to preserve her features had darkened the skin in places, and we also noticed small amounts of white, waxy material on her face. Their splash-like patterns may well have been the result of early attempts to light the chamber before it was wired for electricity in 1902, although Loret’s original candle-lit examination of the three bodies may also have left this tell-tale clue as he bent over each mummy in turn, sputtering candle in hand.
Closer examination of the Elder Woman’s face revealed that her skin seemed to be covered in some sort of rash or pitting, resembling that on the face of Ramses V who had been buried in the other side chamber and was now in the Cairo Museum. When his facial pustules had been investigated some time back it was suggested that this was evidence of smallpox, and Stephen and I agreed that this would be one to ask Don Brothwell about back at the University of York. We also noticed that a small amount of the original linen wrappings still covered her left eyelid, explaining why her eye is partly obscured in the old photographs. Stephen then began to work his way down the body in meticulous detail.
The right arm had been laid straight down along the side with the hand resting on the thigh. Fragments of the original high-quality linens were still stuck to the shiny black resins that the embalmers had originally brushed over the corpse ‘to give it that Ronseal finish’, as Stephen described it. The hand itself was covered in a thin layer of resin and her middle finger was missing, perhaps the result of an attempt by tomb robbers to pull off the precious gold rings which once embellished each of her fingers, and quite possibly carrying the names of her husband. The same fine layer of resin with more small fragments of linen also covered her left hand, although this lay in a quite different position, resting close to the collar bone, since the embalmers had prepared her body with the left forearm bent up in the pose of a queen. As we already knew from the original black-and-white ‘head-shots’, the fingers of the left hand were still clutched to form a fist, presumably to hold a sceptre – most likely the lily sceptre that queens regularly hold when depicted in statues and wall scenes. And the royal manicurist had presumably been at work here, since her remaining nails appeared to be well manicured and stained with henna.
Thick layers of linen still covered her neck, where the black resin coating was clearly different from the brownish-red shades of the materials applied to other parts of her body. Many of these seem to have been chosen for various symbolic reasons, and Spell 42 in the Book of the Dead reveals that each part of the body was protected by a different god or goddess. Since certain deities could be represented by their signature oil or perfume, we wondered if this was what we were seeing here.
All manner of protective amulets would also have been placed over various parts of the body and, despite the idea that the Amarna royals did away with all gods but the Aten, the amulets found in the Royal Tomb show that they too had relied on such traditional methods to protect their remains. So in addition to the large Heart Scarab placed over the heart, which always remained in the body as the seat of all wisdom, the classic Eye of Horus amulet was provided for ‘your protection, spreading its protection all around you and overthrowing your foes’.
Yet such protective powers had not been sufficient to save the Elder Woman from severe treatment. For although her wonderful face remained intact, there was precious little left of the front of her torso, from the chest right down to the abdomen. Fragments of gold winding sheets inscribed with Tiy’s name are said to have been found in the Amarna Royal Tomb, and we wondered if pulling them away from a body covered in glue-like resins could have caused such destruction. Something similar certainly seems to have happened when the wrappings and gold sheets had been lifted from the mystery mummy found in KV.55. However it had happened, it was major damage.
But there was a plus side too: it did allow us to examine the way her body cavity had been treated after her internal organs were removed during the mummification process. The cavity itself had been filled with some kind of granular packing. And although the actual incision made to pull out the entrails was located as usual on the left side of the abdomen, its position did not seem to match either of those originally set down by Smith as either ‘before Tuthmosis III’ or ‘after Tuthmosis III’ – one of the ways mummies are usually dated. So was this a new and different means of removing the organs, pointing to a different form of mummification?
A thick layer of resin covered what remained of the lower abdomen, and the left leg was largely exposed. The right leg, however, was covered in many of the original wrappings, still in a tangled mass where the ancient robbers had left them. But some time after Loret had had the bodies sketched, and before Smith had examined them, both feet had been broken off. The left foot, which had been retrieved at some time and placed between the thighs, had the tip of the big toe missing and what Smith had described as an ulcer visible on her left heel. If this was indeed an ulcer it would certainly have made walking painful. This was something else we would have to check with Don.
We paused for a moment to look at our surroundings, and saw that the roughly hewn walls of the small, square, rock-cut chamber had never been finished off, and certainly never decorated. Stephen noticed the occasional blob of red paint like ones he’d seen in other tombs earlier. Having analysed them he knew that they were ancient, almost certainly the original guide marks used by the stonemasons when the chamber was being created. The ceiling was also soot-blackened in places, presumably from the flaming torches used by those building the tomb, preparing the burial equipment, and perhaps even those who had stripped the dead of their wealth.
In the far corner against the wall lay the only object remaining with the mummies, a long, plain, brown, body-shaped coffin whose flimsy appearance was due to the fact that it appeared to be made of cartonnage. According to the original reports, none of the three mummies had been found in a coffin, nor was there any mention of such a thing being found anywhere in the chamber. But on reflection we realised that the tomb owner, Amenhotep II, had been reburied in ancient times in exactly this type of coffin after his original, presumably golden, versions had been stolen, and was then returned to his stone sarcophagus in the burial chamber outside. When his mummy was finally removed to the Cairo Museum in 1931, it appears that his bargain basement replacement coffin was left behind, along with the three mummies, and walled up with them in the side chamber.
Time was now running out, so we moved along to the boy. Although he too was a very well-preserved mummy, we knew from the old photographs that he’d suffered some severe damage to his chest in ancient times. As I gazed down at his sleeping face, with its wonderful long, curly eyelashes still intact and a splendid hairstyle, it seemed obvious that this was a royal prince. But why would a son of Amenhotep II be left unwrapped on the floor of his father’s tomb between two anonymous women who almost seemed to be protecting him? Surely he was in some way connected with them, we thought, as we began to look for clues.
Smith had long ago commented on the boy’s ‘beloid skull’ and his ‘exceptional brachycephalism’, a reference to the fact that his head is nearly as broad from side to side as from front to back. This was accentuated by the fact that his head had been shaved perfectly smooth except for a long sidelock of hair, the mark of young princes, on the right. Although the hair was now very dry and brittle, the length and thickness of the lock was of the type fashionable in the mid-18th dynasty, the early Amarna Period. This was also true of the large hole in each of his earlobes, since earrings had only become fashionable for royal males from the reign of Tuthmosis IV onwards.
The top of his bare head was darkened with the same resiny mixture we’d seen on the head of the Elder Woman next to him, no doubt applied during the last rites, and the right side of his skull had been punctured, causing a large, sharp-edged hole of the sort found on a number of other royals from the tomb. It looked as if he, like them, had received a violent blow to the head during tomb robbery and the fragments of bone had fallen down inside his skull.
The size of the hole enabled us to check for any trace of the brain. Although Smith had suggested that the ancient embalmers had removed it through the prince’s nose, Stephen was suspicious. He’d been studying the work of Alfred Lucas, the chemist who had examined samples from the royal mummies on Smith’s behalf – samples which had included an extraordinary 80g of the boy’s brain.
As far as we knew from our own experiences, a dried-out three thousand-year-old brain could hardly weigh much more than this when complete, so it seems that the prince’s skull had not been cleaned out after all. But this struck us both as curious, since brain removal was standard procedure in the mummification process, especially when achieving such high-quality results as we were seeing now. So was this yet another clue that we were looking at a new form of mummification?
Beneath partly visible eyebrows, the prince’s eyes with their long, curly lashes were wide-set, and a slight smile seemed to hover about his broad lips. Looking at him from the side, he shared something of the Elder Woman’s profile, especially the shape of his nose. Parts of his face were similarly discoloured by the use of preservative resins, and again small splashes of candle wax could be seen on his skin.
Although the prince had both his hands modestly arranged over his genitals, Smith had been able to work out that unlike most of the Egyptian male elite, he had not been circumcised. His left hand was clasped, although the thumb was extended, whilst the right hand lay below, fully extended with the little finger bent back, suggesting that he had been holding something. But what?
Since his torso was covered only in a thin layer of resin no more than a millimetre thick, the strong lights were able to reveal the slight imprint of some sort of regalia or costume once worn close to the skin. The shapes of the imprint suggested perhaps some sort of jewelled garment resembling the military-style corselet of semi-precious stones set in a layered feathered design which had been found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. So perhaps our prince had been sent off into eternity wearing a similar type of glittering garment? It would certainly help to explain the severe damage to the upper left side of the chest area, an area traditionally festooned with all manner of protective necklaces and amulets of precious materials, and the place most frequently targeted by tomb robbers.
Looking down the left side of the body, Stephen noticed that the boy’s embalming incision did not match either of the standard positions given by Smith. Instead it resembled that of the Elder Woman, suggesting that the two bodies may have been mummified by the same technique.
Along with pieces of original linen wrappings still sticking to his torso, resin-soaked linens had been used to pack his chest and abdomen, and the lower part of the body too was packed with what appeared to be mud. This was an ingredient used to pack many royal mummies, but it still seemed a rather strange material to use side by side with so much gold – unless the mud had come from the Nile. Believed to be the source of life, with miraculous regenerative qualities, this highly potent material would have been a most appropriate ingredient to use in the mummification process.
Looking at the lower limbs, the right leg seemed a little shorter than the left. Once again both feet had been broken off after the bodies were discovered in 1898 and some of the toes were missing. In the increasingly suffocating heat a fine layer of dust had begun to stick to our sodden faces. Silently we cursed the ineffectual fans which whirred away at the other side of the wall. Nevertheless we had to press on, as time was running short.
Finally passing on to the third body, subconsciously having left the best until last, I forced myself to suppress any feelings and tried to switch into ‘detached scientist’ mode as we began to study the body of the Younger Woman which I found so intriguing. A well-preserved mummy, she had nevertheless managed to fool the early archaeologists who had considered her male simply on account of her shaven head. Not the most reliable way of sexing a body, it has to be said, and with no sign of male genitals she certainly appeared female to us.
Her face was beautifully proportioned. The line of her profile, from her forehead to the tip of her nose, followed a perfectly smooth line, just as I’d seen in Smith’s photographs and just as in the famous bust, with no sign of the usual indentation or ridge at the top of the nose. Her eyes were closed beneath the faint traces of her eyebrows, and the contours of her face had been preserved with a very thin layer of embalming resin. The same resins had also preserved the distinct impression of something worn tightly around the forehead above the ears, and although the right ear was missing, broken off long ago, the left was intact. Much to my surprise, its lobe was pierced with two large holes, far larger than the ‘small perforations’ Smith had described. As large as those in the boy’s ears beside her, the holes were big enough to have taken some very large earrings.
I tried to imagine her in all her finery, jewel-encrusted earrings swinging from delicate lobes peeping out from the bottom of the short wig Loret had originally found beside her. Beneath this her head was completely shaven, her lack of hair certainly accentuating her face and long, thin neck. Her head was so perfectly shaven that I could find virtually no trace of stubble. Yet the skin was covered in the same thin layer of mid-brown resin used on the other two individuals, and a hole in the front of her skull, once again caused by robbers, allowed us to check if the brain had been removed. And much to our surprise it hadn’t, suggesting a link between the Younger Woman and the boy.
Sadly, as I knew only too well from Smith’s photographs, the hole in the skull was not the only damage that had been inflicted on this mummy. Her face had been bashed in, the mouth so severely damaged that many of her teeth were missing. Why would thieves attack the mouth, where nothing of value was ever placed? It just didn’t make sense, unless it had been done maliciously. And it certainly looked malicious to us, not only disfiguring the woman’s face but, even more seriously, preventing her breathing in the Afterlife.
Who would have inflicted such terrible damage? It may have been those responsible for reburying the royal dead, the priests of Amen. If this was Nefertiti, they would have had good reason to despise someone who had played such a leading role during the tumultuous Amarna Period. I could well imagine them trying to destroy her chance of an Afterlife through violent methods which stopped short of destroying the body, which would have jeopardised their own souls when facing the Final Judgment.
The damage to the chest was far more understandable. Both Stephen and I, like Smith before us, assumed it to have been the work of tomb robbers, hacking the mummy about in their search for valuables in the customary neck and chest area. Their handiwork had also exposed the internal packing of linen, once again overlaid with mud. Her abdomen was densely packed with many rolls of linen padding, the area inside and beneath the embalming incision packed with more mud and what appeared to be small pieces of limestone. Thinking that this might be debris from her original place of burial, we discussed what kind of information geological analysis of the rock type might be able to reveal.
There was damage to her protruding left hip, which had clearly been struck with some sort of blade, perhaps by thieves searching for the gold embalming plates sometimes used to cover the incision, as in the case of Tiy’s father, Yuya. Given all the other similarities between these three bodies and those of Tiy’s superbly mummified parents, it was a distinct possibility that these three too had had gold plates applied over their embalming incisions. And the incision in the Younger Woman, in the same unexpected place as those we’d seen on the Elder Woman and Boy, again suggested a different way of doing things during the vagaries of the Amarna Period.
Now it was time to tackle the enigma of the arms. Covered in the thinnest coating of resin and fine linen, the Younger Woman’s left arm extended down the side of the body and her hand was laid over her thigh. But as we knew from Smith’s report, her right arm had been ripped away or hacked off in ancient times just below the shoulder – something I’d always felt may have been done to remove a sceptre she could have been holding, thus forcibly stripping away her symbols of power.
Just as in his original photographs, we could see the twisted, ragged remnants of dried up muscle tissue on the stump of the right arm. Yet, as I’d noticed earlier that day, there was no sign of the remains of the bent up right arm that Smith had seen on his visit here in 1907; instead, a second right arm that he hadn’t mentioned had now appeared. It was completely straight and minus the hand, and the damage made it difficult to gauge its original length, so Stephen measured it and found it was almost 2cm longer than the corresponding part of the woman’s remaining left arm. Nor did the fine-textured, resin-soaked linen at the top of this extended loose arm appear to match that remaining on her right shoulder. So this loose limb may not have belonged to her after all. What we really needed in order to work it out were X-rays, which would also be useful in studying her legs, still covered in layers of fine brown linen.
Completely immersed in our work as we examined, measured, photographed, sketched and scribbled notes, we were oblivious to the growing crowd gathering at the entrance to the side chamber. Amidst much throat-clearing and eye-rolling, the inspectors decided that our time was up. With the Valley about to close to visitors, they still had to seal up the wall again and plaster it over. So, with great reluctance and many a backward glance, we slowly and carefully climbed back out into the burial chamber and let the workmen move in.
I suddenly felt incredibly emotional and, when asked that classic if unoriginal question ‘How do you feel?’ I answered like a child who has just seen fairies at the bottom of the garden. I’d been allowed a glimpse of these incredible people after waiting for twelve years, and now they were about to disappear. Within little more than minutes it was difficult to believe that the wall had ever been removed. As the final coat of plaster was applied, one of the inspectors kindly asked if I’d like to write the date in the top left corner as a record of when the chamber was last entered. Forming my clumsy Arabic numerals into the wet plaster, I thought about the countless tomb doorways which had been sealed and inscribed in this way elsewhere in the Valley during the last three and a half thousand years, and felt incredibly privileged. Crossing the Nile that evening as the sun set behind us, the feeling of disbelief was replaced by a huge rush of adrenaline-fuelled excitement. It had been a truly phenomenal experience.
Having examined the mummification techniques used on all three bodies for himself, Stephen was convinced that they all dated to the second half of the 18th dynasty. I’d also been able to add my own observations to everything Smith had seen – except of course for the arm, whose disappearance was a mystery. Our animated discussion about brain removal, embalming fluids and hacked-off limbs continued for hours in the hotel bar, and anyone listening in must have wondered what they’d wandered into.
We were now both convinced that the three were not members of Amenhotep II’s family, as had been so often assumed. Because they resembled so closely the mummies of Tiy’s parents, Yuya and Tuya, the three were surely linked to this later branch of the royal house. And as had been suggested back in the 1970s, if the Elder Woman was Tiy, then the young prince could just be her eldest son, Prince Tuthmosis. This would give us Akhenaten’s mother and elder brother, side by side with the Younger Woman who had been embalmed in a very similar way and was surely in some way connected with them.
If only we’d had more time, or the means of finding out their ages and possible cause of death or whatever other secrets they might have held. But, to quote Howard Carter, it had certainly been ‘the day of days, the most wonderful that I have ever lived through, and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again’. Or so I thought at the time.
Back in the UK we began to talk through our findings with a small group of trusted colleagues, and as hundreds of emails flew between Yorkshire and Ohio, I discussed many of the mummies’ unusual features with my colleague Earl Ertman. We were both intrigued that the double-pierced lobe seems only to appear on some of the statues of Nefertiti and one of her daughters, and on the mummy of Tiy’s mother, Tuya. And Earl’s work on Amarna crowns, dating back to the 1970s, suggested to him that the impression on the Younger Woman’s forehead had been caused by a gold brow band, a piece of regalia only worn by reigning kings and their chief wife. After long deliberation, we also spoke with the American television company Discovery who were funding our work, and decided we had nothing to lose by putting together a proposal in the hope of getting permission to go back into the tomb with a team of experts, led by our York colleague Don Brothwell.
Needing to carry out full X-rays of all three bodies, we approached King’s College Hospital in London and the King’s centre for the Assessment of Radiological Equipment (KCARE). Advisers to the National Health Service since 1979, the KCARE team had a wealth of experience using all kinds of X-ray equipment, and so we travelled down to London one rainy autumn day to meet their principal physicist, Alistair Mackenzie, and superintendent radiographer, Andrea Bates. We needed to know if it would be possible to take the X-rays in situ, and they suggested the newly designed digital X-ray detector with a portable X-ray tube made by Canon. This was ideal for imaging in restricted spaces such as the tomb’s small side chamber. The most impressive part was that Canon’s equipment incorporated digital imaging, which gave an instant X-ray image on the computer screen. It was all a far cry from the days when the film had to be taken off to the nearest suitable place for development, which in the case of the X-rays of Tutankhamen’s mummy taken in 1967 was a ‘commodious bathroom’ at the Winter Palace Hotel!
But what if the equipment was unsuited to the unusual conditions? Before any such cutting-edge technology could be flown to Egypt, sent across the Nile and manoeuvred into position in a small rock-cut chamber in the remote Valley of the Kings, we’d have to organise a trial run closer to home. We needed to work out the optimum dimensions of the metal support arms which would hold the X-ray camera in place within the limited space of the side chamber, and we also needed to test the kinds of results we’d get from a mummified body rather than a live patient.
So we went to see our long-time colleague Angela Thomas, curator of archaeology at Bolton Museum, to ask her somewhat tentatively if it would be possible to ‘borrow’ one of her mummies. And could we also bring along a team of scientists, radiographers, engineers, computer operators and technicians, and the TV crew who would be filming it all?
‘Of course,’ she replied, never batting an eyelid. Now that’s the kind of curator you don’t find every day!
The subject selected was the unwrapped mummy of an anonymous, shaven-headed man. His rigid body was carefully lifted out from its painted coffin and delicately placed on top of the protective glass cover of his sarcophagus. Then the digital detector was gently slid underneath his head while the X-ray machine was swung into position, the red light beam from the machine highlighting his ancient features. As Andrea donned her lead apron and stood by the body, we all stepped a safe distance away before she pressed the button to take the first shot. Within a second it had appeared on the nearby computer screen – a crisp, high-quality image revealing the internal workings of one of Bolton’s very own ancient Egyptians. We were all delighted with the quality of the image. As a series of others were taken and assessed for technical and positioning details we behaved like a group of children with a new toy as we crowded around the monitor, able to magnify parts of the image in order to concentrate on specific details.
Much to our amazement, we eventually received official permission from the Egyptian authorities to go ahead with our unusual project, the first time in more than a quarter of a century that such a large-scale expedition had been allowed into the world’s most famous graveyard. And with everything ready to go for February 2003, it was with a real sense of anticipation and not a few nerves that I set off to Egypt once again.
This time I’d be getting answers from an entire team including some of the world’s leading experts in their field. And although I was happy to give them the historical background and fill in as many of the blanks as possible I didn’t want to colour their judgement, so simply stated the facts as they existed at the time – that many authorities thought the three were relatives of the tomb owner, Amenhotep II, and the suggestion that one might be Queen Tiy had not been completely accepted.
There were no guarantees that we’d be able to prove the Younger Woman was who I thought she might be, but it would certainly be exciting to discover all we could about both her and her two companions. It was going to be interesting. Completely and utterly nerve-racking of course, but interesting none the less.