An unnamed Egyptian mummy made a long journey until she finally settled in the Treasures of the World Museum in Wichita, Kansas, USA, where she became known as
"The Lady with the Braids" because of her rare braided hairstyle, which is still preserved today.
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Although the available information about that mummy is very scarce, and is limited to only one piece of information, which is that she most likely lived during the New Kingdom or the Third Intermediate Period, i.e., more than 3,000 years ago, a research team from the University of Michigan in the United States was able, using high-resolution “computed tomography” technology, to extract from it a treasure trove of information that gives features about her social and environmental class in which she lived.
whose mummy was found among a group of mummies, and not in a solitary tomb, belonged to a well-to-do or elite social class, but not a royal one.
The scans revealed an "incomplete" attempt to imitate royal mummification, where in royal mummification the brain and viscera were completely removed, whereas in the case of this "Lady with Braids" parts of the liver and other organs remained inside the body, and the brain was not extracted through the nose, a technique that was common in royal mummification.
This level of mummification reflects a lower level of competence on the part of the person performing the mummification and the financial capacity of the lady's family, as explained by Bassam Al-Shammaa, historian, lecturer and member of the International Council of Museums.
He told “If royal mummification represents a (5-star) service, then this mummy received mummification that did not exceed (one or two stars). It was an attempt by a family with relatively affordable means to give their deceased a royal ceremony but at a lower cost.”
The embalming market in ancient Egypt was governed by financial ability. Wealthy families hired top embalmers and bought the finest linen
while the middle classes resorted to less experienced embalmers and lower-quality materials, which explains why the embalmers failed to remove all the internal organs such as the liver, diaphragm, and brain tissue in this case, as Bassam explains.
The teeth of "Lady with Braids" underwent a detailed examination, which revealed that she did not suffer from a decay problem, but she did suffer from severe tooth erosion, signs of gum disease, in addition to a broken tooth and a tooth that had drifted towards the pharynx.
Bassam agreed with the researchers that tooth erosion and gum disease were caused by the diet of the ancient Egyptians, especially bread which sometimes contained fine sand grains resulting from the traditional grinding of grains, which led to tooth erosion over time.
But he disagreed with their view that the broken tooth and the tooth that drifted towards the pharynx were the result of an error during the practice of the funerary “opening of the mouth” ritual.
This ritual was performed on the mummy with the aim of restoring its symbolic ability to breathe, speak, see, and eat in the afterlife, according to the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.
Researchers believe that the embalmers used steel or stone tools forcefully inside the mouth of the woman with the braids, causing a broken tooth and another intact one to move into the pharynx area, which Bassam rejects.
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