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Back to the tomb of the mummies



Long ago, when I was growing up in South Australia, one of my favourite places to visit was the Ancient Egypt Gallery in the South Australian Musuem – the tomb of the mummies. It is still there.

The Ancient Egypt Gallery was known as the Tomb of the Mummies. It was established in 1939 in the museum and nothing seems to have changed. There are still the collection of mummies, and more than 650 Egyptian artefacts, most of which are genuine pieces from Egypt. Those that are not genuine, are replicas and model casts.

The items in the Ancient Egypt Gallery form part of the South Australian Museum’s Foreign Ethnology Collection, which has more than 22,000 items from the Pacific, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

In the small, small tomb of a room is the original sarcophagus and mummy of Renpit-Nefert, which has been part of the museum collection of mummies for over 100 years. Reverend Roby Fletcher acquired Renpit-Nefert and the other mummies from Egypt when he was commissioned in 1890 to “inquire … as to the best means of procuring objects of archaeological interest, illustrative of ancient Egypt or Babylonian civilization.” When he was in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, he purchased the mummy of Renpit-Nefert and her coffin. Her name means “beautiful year” suggesting that Renpit-Nefert’s parents were pleased with the birth of their daughter.

In 1999 Renpit-Nefert’s mummy was investigated using X-ray and CT scanning technology. The results indicated that she was at least 40 years old when she died from chronic illness or acute infection. She was 160cm tall and had had at least two children. Carbon dating has indicated that she died around 400 BCE. The gods that are painted on her coffin grant her “a beautiful burial” and the base of her coffin has a scene of the mummy being carried by the sacred Apis bull.

At the same time scans were undertaken on other mummies, such as the Nubian mummy called “George” who was confirmed as male, about 167cm tall, and around 25-30 years old. His teeth showed little sign of wear, although several were missing. In childhood he had fractured two ribs but these were well healed. His death was probably the result of an acute infection.


So the tomb of the mummies, although small, is still an interesting room.

www.samuseum.sa.gov.au










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