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BISHOP

Mummy bishop drives masses to Swedish town

A perfectly preserved mummified bishop who died in the 17th century and was unearthed last year has been given a second funeral, after crowds queued to see him at a museum in southern Sweden earlier this week.

Published: 11 December 2015 16:26 CET
Mummy bishop drives masses to Swedish town
The bishop photographed in April 2015. Photo: Ola Torkelsson/TT
The bishop, Peder Windstrup, died 336 years ago, and was taken out of his crypt at Lund Cathedral in southern Sweden in September last year.
 
He was returned on Friday along with the remains of a human fetus discovered at his feet and given a second traditional Lutheran funeral.
 
Windstrup's body is one of the best-preserved in Europe from the 1600s and is believed to have been mummified by the cold Nordic air rather than the embalming methods popular with Egyptians.
 
The coffin of the bishop, who was an influentual Lutheran church leader, was initially opened 15 months ago because the cathedral planned to bury him. But archaeologists and scientists campaigned to examine the body first, arguing that their findings could play an important role in medical research.
 
Unlike embalmed mummies which had their internal organs removed, most of Windstrup's insides remained intact and he was even given a CT scan at the city's University Hospital.
 
“His remains constitute a unique archive of medical history on the living conditions and health of people living in the 1600s”, Per Karsten, director of the Historical Museum at Lund University, said in a press statement in July this year.
 
 
The mummy went on display at Lund University's Historical Museum this week, with more than 3,500 people turning up to see him on Wednesday. The museum stayed open until 10pm to ensure as many as possible got a glimpse.
 
“This is as close as you can get to the 1600s,” Per Karsten, Lund University Historical Museum's Director, told Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan earlier this week.
 
But he described the record turnout as “completely incomprehensible” and praised the public for queueing patiently to get in.

ARCHAEOLOGY

‘Queen Nefertari’s legs’ found in northern Italy

A pair of legs on display in Turin's Egyptian Museum likely belonged to Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertari, according to a new archaeological study.

Published: 6 December 2016 14:10 CET
'Queen Nefertari's legs' found in northern Italy
The mummified legs. Photo: Plos One

The legs had been kept in the museum for decades after being found in Nefertari's tomb – but this study is the first to scientifically assess whether they actually belonged to the ancient queen.

Nefertari's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Queens was discovered in 1904 by Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, who sent some of the remains he found there to the Turin museum. 

But until now, the study published in Plos One explained, there had been plenty of grounds for skepticism as to the authenticity of the legs. The tomb had been plundered, and one hypothesis was that the bones found by Schiaparelli had been washed in from a 17th or 18th century, after the tomb had been opened.

An international team of archaeologists carried out a series of tests on the remains, using carbon dating, DNA analysis and chemical analysis to prove that the legs belonged to a woman of around Nefertari's age.

What's more, the materials which had been used to embalm the legs were consistent with 13th-century BC mummification techniques – the era when Nefertari lived. A pair of ornately decorated sandals found in the tomb are consistent with the size of the legs, suggesting that both belonged to a person of importance.

“No absolute certainty exists,” the archaeologists said, but they added that the theory that the legs were Nefertari''s “seems to be the most credible and realistic, and is coherent with the findings of the excavators and with the inscriptions found on the funerary objects.”

The team of researchers was led by the UK's University of York, and included one Italian, Raffaella Bianucci of the University of Turin.

Nefertari was the favourite wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II and one of the most famous Egyptian queens alongside Cleopatra and Nefertiti. Her name means 'beautiful companion'.

The legs, along with other objects from the tomb, are on display at the Egyptian Museum.

 

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