In my last post, I mentioned how papyri were often reused as cartonnage in human and animal mummies. Many surviving ancient works adress the human mummification process, but the knowledge of cartonnage being used in animal mummification had been lost to us moderns. I say "had been lost" because that all changed during a winter excavation in 1900.
On January 16, 1900 Grenfell and Hunt led a dig in search of cartonnage papyri in the Ptolemaic cemeteries on the west side of the Fayyum. One day, their team entered the ancient village Tebtynis (modern day Umm-el-Baragat). In hopes of unearthing human mummies, the team determined the location of an ancient tomb.
Just imagine how excited (and relieved) those first on the scene would have been. After years of tramping through Egyptian desert searching for papyri, they were able to calculate and predict the location of a Ptolemaic cemetery.
The first workman (I like to imagine Indiana Jones) makes his way down into the crypt. At first everything is pitch black. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, a host of millennia-old mummies slowly become visible. But instead of human mummies tucked neatly in sarcophagi, there standing before him where the preserved remains of crocodiles!
Lifted to the heights of euphoria only to be brought crashing to earth by reality, this workman lashed out in a primal display of emotion, and smashed the nearest crocodile to pieces. To his surprise, the mummified creature was stuffed with papyri like a librarian's piñata.
By the end of that year's excavations, Grenfell and Hunt had found papyri in about 2% of all mummified crocodiles, which goes to show that when you are at the end of your rope and all else fails, hit something.
On January 16, 1900 Grenfell and Hunt led a dig in search of cartonnage papyri in the Ptolemaic cemeteries on the west side of the Fayyum. One day, their team entered the ancient village Tebtynis (modern day Umm-el-Baragat). In hopes of unearthing human mummies, the team determined the location of an ancient tomb.
Just imagine how excited (and relieved) those first on the scene would have been. After years of tramping through Egyptian desert searching for papyri, they were able to calculate and predict the location of a Ptolemaic cemetery.
The first workman (I like to imagine Indiana Jones) makes his way down into the crypt. At first everything is pitch black. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, a host of millennia-old mummies slowly become visible. But instead of human mummies tucked neatly in sarcophagi, there standing before him where the preserved remains of crocodiles!
Lifted to the heights of euphoria only to be brought crashing to earth by reality, this workman lashed out in a primal display of emotion, and smashed the nearest crocodile to pieces. To his surprise, the mummified creature was stuffed with papyri like a librarian's piñata.
By the end of that year's excavations, Grenfell and Hunt had found papyri in about 2% of all mummified crocodiles, which goes to show that when you are at the end of your rope and all else fails, hit something.
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