{"id":164547,"date":"2024-10-30T10:51:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T10:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/30\/an-egyptian-mummys-silent-scream-hints-at-her-violent-death\/"},"modified":"2024-10-30T10:51:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T10:51:22","slug":"an-egyptian-mummys-silent-scream-hints-at-her-violent-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/30\/an-egyptian-mummys-silent-scream-hints-at-her-violent-death\/","title":{"rendered":"An Egyptian mummy\u2019s silent \u2018scream\u2019 hints at her violent death"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/080124_bb_screaming-mummy_feat-800x450.jpg?fit=800,450&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"An Egyptian mummy\u2019s silent \u2018scream\u2019 hints at her violent death\" title=\"An Egyptian mummy\u2019s silent \u2018scream\u2019 hints at her violent death\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Eek! A horrible death could explain the horrified look on one Egyptian mummy\u2019s face.<\/p>\n<p>Her remains were unearthed in the 1930s in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. They\u2019d been found in a burial chamber from roughly 3,500 years ago. The unnamed woman\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/scientists-say-mummy\">mummy<\/a> seems to wear an open-mouthed look of pain or fear. That expression has earned her \u201cthe Screaming Woman\u201d nickname.<\/p>\n<p>Now, research suggests that her expression <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fmed.2024.1406225\/full\" rel=\"noopener\">resulted from a rare muscle reaction at death<\/a>. It\u2019s called a cadaveric spasm. It\u2019s a sudden stiffening of muscles in someone who dies a violent death under extreme physical and emotional stress.<\/p>\n<p>Sahar Saleem and Samia El-Merghani shared these findings August 2 in&nbsp;<em>Frontiers in Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/lets-learn-about-mummies\">Let\u2019s learn about mummies<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Saleem is a radiologist. She works at Cairo University in Egypt. El-Merghani is an anthropologist, also based in Cairo. She\u2019s a mummy conservator at Egypt\u2019s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.<\/p>\n<p>The Screaming Woman\u2019s cause of death remains a mystery. So researchers cannot be sure a cadaveric spasm caused her alarming look. But new evidence does show care and cost involved in mummifying her body. This hints that the embalmers who preserved her did not simply forget to close her mouth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/scientists-say-ct-scan\">CT scans<\/a> showed that the woman\u2019s internal organs had not been removed. That\u2019s unusual in Egyptian embalming. The researchers looked at samples of the mummy\u2019s skin, hair and wig under a microscope.<\/p>\n<p>They also analyzed chemicals in those samples. This revealed that embalmers used imported juniper resin and frankincense on the mummy\u2019s skin. Such treatment would have kept the body well-preserved. Embalmers took further care to dye the woman\u2019s hair. For that, they used juniper resin and henna. The mummy also wore a braided wig. It was made from date palm fibers that had been dyed black. (The color black represented youth in ancient Egypt.)<\/p>\n<p>This all suggests that if the embalmers who worked on this mummy could have closed her mouth, they would have. That means that her silent \u201cscream\u201d was likely frozen in place when she died.<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/egyptian-mummy-scream-violent-death\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eek! A horrible death could explain the horrified look on one Egyptian mummy\u2019s face. Her remains were unearthed in the 1930s in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. They\u2019d been found in a burial chamber from roughly 3,500 years ago. The unnamed woman\u2019s mummy seems to wear an open-mouthed look of pain or fear. That [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/080124_bb_screaming-mummy_feat-800x450.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1860,19438,4161,88325,88326,10965,1390],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164549,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164547\/revisions\/164549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}