On 14 September 2021, as part of the Year of Egypt in Russia, the State Hermitage marked a Day of Egypt at the Hermitage with the opening of two exhibitions – “Egypt at the Hermitage. The Mummy Changes its Name” and “Egypt at the Hermitage. After Mummies”. Both will be open to the public from 15 September.
“With these exhibitions, which are dedicated to the Year of Egypt in Russia, the Hermitage is following the tendency embodied by the creation of the very recently opened Museum of Egyptian Civilization – to present and emphasize the internal historical unity of Egypt’s cultures across the different eras,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, observed. “The items on display are splendid, full of mysteries and fascinating stories: from the ban on keeping mummies in the imperial palace to the perception of Dionysian scenes as a symbol of the Eucharist and the demand in Europe for Islamic luxury articles.”
The Mummy Changes its Name
The temporary exhibition “The Mummy Changes its Name” tells about the results of using computer tomography to examine one of the Ancient Egyptian mummies in the Hermitage collection. One of the main aims of the exhibition is to present the results of scholarly research work by Egyptologists that remains hidden from the eyes of museum visitors. In the museum’s records, the exhibit in question was entered as the mummy of a woman named Babat, whose two sarcophagi are in the Hermitage and make it possible to state that she came from a Theban family of priests of the god Montu and was herself a singer in the temple of Amun-Ra who lived at the time of the 26th dynasty, roughly in the years 620–580 BC.
In 2017, thanks to specialists from Clinical Hospital No 122 named after L.G. Sokolov in Saint Petersburg, it was established that the mummy is not female, as was previously believed, but male. The examination was carried out on state-of-the-art equipment using the methods of computer tomography. This made it possible without damaging the ancient body wrapped in numerous bandages to view its insides, to identify distinctive characteristics of its physique and to begin the search for answers to the following basic questions: What age and gender was the deceased? Was there an obvious cause of death? What was his/her height? What diseases did he/she suffer from? What organs were removed during mummification? Are there any amulets, supports or attachments on the body?
The results of the CAT scan showed that this was the corpse of a man 35–40 years old, who probably suffered from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that, as a rule, leads to death around the age of 40. During the medical examination, it was found that the man had most probably undergone castration – a procedure that is practically unknown in Ancient Egypt. The fact that the body was that of a man is the most important result of the examination for museum Egyptology. It is highly likely that the mummy is the wrapped body of a man named Pa-kesh, whose inner and outer sarcophagi are part of the Hermitage collection. He lived in Thebes at the end of the 25th dynasty, around 712–656 BC, and was a priest of Amun and head of the pharaoh’s doorkeepers. Both Babat and Pa-kesh belonged to the extremely wealthy portion of Egyptian society as is demonstrated by the quality with which their sarcophagi were finished. Their shape, and also the inscriptions and images placed on both the inside and outside, reflect one of the stages in the long evolution of sarcophagi in Ancient Egyptian culture.
What became almost a detective story around the Hermitage’s mummies was to a large extent the consequence of the museum’s complicated history around the turn of the 20th century. When the New Hermitage was opened as a public museum, the need arose for Egyptian culture to be represented in it – as a minor prelude to the Classical antiquities. At that time, the Hermitage’s stocks were enriched with exhibits from the Egyptian Museum, a part of the Kunstkammer that was closed in 1862. According to the prevailing rules, human remains could not be kept within the palace complex, so the mummies remained at the Kunstkammer, and their transfer only became possible after the Revolution. Thus, for a long time the mummies were separated from their sarcophagi. That was not only unnatural from the viewpoint of Egyptian religion, but also very detrimental from the viewpoint of museum practice. Probably while still in the Kunstkammer some of them were unwrapped without the due documentation or became nameless due to being moved around, and some might have ended up in someone else’s sarcophagus before being transferred to the Hermitage.
At the present time, there are eight Ancient Egyptian mummies in the Hermitage collection, including two of children. They are in various states of preservation, and there are also separate fragments. It was the struggle against death that became one of the most prominent features of Ancient Egyptian civilization, making mummies one of the foremost symbols of its culture, alongside pyramids, obelisks and magnificent temples. They have been the object of particular enduring interest for centuries now. The attention that the Egyptians devoted to the preservation of the bodies of the dead is explained by their specific conceptions of a person’s nature being made up of several parts. These parts, the sum of which formed the person – ka, ba, ren, sheut, sah – are not mutually complementary. Each of them separately fully represents the person’s individuality, only perceived from different sides. When a mummy was wrapped, had a mask put on it and was placed in a sarcophagus, it was, in effect, being turned into a statue linked to the visual image of the person that lived on after his/her death, turning into an independent being – the ka. The image of the deceased was preserved in the memory of those who had known them, and with the aid of depictions-reminders it could be made virtually eternal.
The display includes the mummy, the ceramic net that lay on it, Babat’s inner, anthropomorphic sarcophagus, Pa-kesh’s sarcophagus complex and a set of ritual vessels, canopic jars, used to store the internal organs extracted during mummification. These last are not directly connected with the central personages of the exhibition but serve to give a fuller picture of what made up an Egyptian burial. The process of examining the mummy in the exhibition is illustrated by a large number of photographs taken during the tomographic scanning of the mummy and 3D reconstructions produced from the CAT scans.
The exhibition curator is Andrei Olegovich Bolshakov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, head of the Sector of the Ancient East within the State Hermitage’s Department of the East.
A scholarly illustrated catalogue – Mumiia meniaet imia (State Hermitage Publishing House, 2021) – has been produced for the exhibition under the scholarly editorship of Andrei Bolshakov. The texts are by State Hermitage researchers Andrei Bolshakov and Andrei Nikolayev and by practising physicians, specialists at Clinical Hospital No 122, Viacheslav Dekan, Sergei Kuznetsov and Viacheslav Ratnikov. The catalogue has a foreword by Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. Besides the results of the CAT scans of the mummy examined from both medical and Egyptological viewpoints, the publication includes texts on the history of mummification, the evolution of sarcophagi, the role of mummies in Egyptian religion and the perception of them in European culture, as well as the ethical issues connected with displaying mummies in museums.
On 14 September 2021, a virtual scholarly conference of “Egyptian Mummies in the Museum” was held on the ZOOM platform. The topics of the presentations were questions about mummification in Ancient Egypt, the restoration and study of mummies, their millennia-long history and modern medicine, the problems of mummies’ existence in museums, and the history and attribution of Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi. The keepers of the State Hermitage’s Egyptian collection, Andrei Bolshakov and Andrei Nikolayev, acted as moderators.
The temporary exhibition “The Mummy Changes its Name” will run from 15 September and is included in both fixed routes around the Main Museum Complex – No 1 (entry by the Jordan Staircase) and No 2 (entry by the Church Staircase). Visitors will find the exhibition by going through the Hall of Ancient Egypt and turning left, into Halls 86–88.
Foreword to the catalogue of the exhibition “The Mummy Changes its Name”
Tomography of the Afterlife Egyptology, one of the oldest disciplines within Oriental studies, remains to this day particularly attractive to people of all ages due to its combination of science and beauty, romance and mysticism, magic and fantasy. The mysterious image of the mummy created by European culture has now become an inseparable part of the ancient burial ritual. This exhibition is about all of that.
Two images lie behind it. The first was the demonstrative public unwrapping of the mummy of Pa-di-iset performed in the Hermitage Theatre in 1929. According to one who witnessed it, the young Boris Piotrovsky, the pretentious ceremony proved unexpectedly long and tedious. It was relocated to the ordinary workrooms. The present-day image turned out unexpected in a different way – the fully wrapped mummy ДВ 8717 was placed in a CAT scanner. They brought the mummy of a woman named Babat and took away the mummy of a man, possibly named Pa-kesh. Both these unexpected occurrences were the consequences of museum ethics in different eras. The male/female mummy became confused because before the Revolution the sarcophagi were kept in the Hermitage, and the mummies themselves in the Academy of Sciences. It was not permitted to keep dead bodies on palace premises. Later it became possible to open them up and show them. The unwrapped mummy is still one of the museum’s most popular exhibits with the public, although the ethical issue is growing ever more acute, becoming one of the main themes of this exhibition.
Above all, though, it is a monologue of museum scholarship. Egyptology demands perseverance and particularly deep knowledge. Hieroglyphs, complex beliefs, an extremely rich literature and a wide variety of artistic styles. The Hermitage’s traditions of working with the material are represented through the example of the virtuoso study of several objects. This thoroughness includes both scientific restoration and, most sensationally, the tomographic examination of a mummy, which has become a model for the employment of the latest technologies in museum practice. We are grateful to the physician-researchers of Clinical Hospital No 122 named after L.G. Sokolov for developing the method and practice for investigating a wrapped mummy. Thanks to them, we have learnt how not to damage the object of our study and discovered a host of “personal details” that turned the mummy for us into a living person with dental problems and diseases of the joints, constitutional peculiarities and even traces left by his occupation. The mummy came to life.
This latest way of interacting with an embalmed corpse exists within the context of the most fantastic conceptions about mummies within European culture: from the use of such bodies as magical medicines and artists’ pigments to a terrifying succession of virtual horror productions. Keen attention to this material has surprisingly made it possible to amend translations and the understanding of literary texts, including no less a figure than Shakespeare. The things Egyptologists get up to!
Coming back to museum ethics. Ancient people devised their rituals so as to preserve the memory of themselves and ensure their continued existence in the afterlife. Perhaps a museum, not only preserving, but even restoring people’s names to them, is indeed one version of an “afterlife”, no worse than some of the others.
Mikhail Piotrovsky
Director of the State Hermitage
About the Exhibition When:
15.09.2021 - 26.06.2022
Where:
Main Museum Complex, Floor 1 of the Winter Palace, Halls 86–88
Available:
For independent viewing as part of Fixed Routes No 1 and No 2
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