2019-07-13_Archaeology_Magazine

20 ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2019

FROM THE TRENCHES

THE UNSEEN MUMMY CHAMBER

N

ear the end of the dig season at a necropolis on the

western bank of the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, a team led

by Antonio Mozas-Calvache of the University of Jaen

discovered a tomb with an unopened coffin visible inside. The

approximately two-by-eight-foot chamber was largely closed off

and its entrance far too narrow for the archaeologists to squeeze

through. These limitations forced Mozas-Calvache and his team

to improvise. They mounted a remote-controlled camera at the

end of a 12 -foot-long pole, pushed it inside the chamber, and used

it to photograph the contents.

The team used the images to generate 3 -D models of the tomb,

including a detailed representation of the 3 , 800 -year-old coffin.

They were able to read hieroglyphs on the coffin, which revealed

the mummy’s identity to be Shemai, a previously unknown broth-

er of late 12 th Dynasty (ca. 1981 – 1802 b.c.) governor Sarenput

II. Given advances in technology, says Mozas-Calvache, “I think

that our work would have been impossible to carry out 10 years

ago.” To see a 3 -D model of the coffin, go to archaeology.org/ 3 Dcoffin.

—jeSS romeo

Wooden coffin

3-D model of the coffin

Deceased’s name

Detail of a pair of eyes

Tomb, Aswan, Egypt