8/3/2019 Lewis, A. Et Al. Conserving Cocodriles 2009

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8/3/2019 Lewis, A. Et Al. Conserving Cocodriles 2009

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Example of a papyrus fragment containing ancient poetry, Cologne. Image courtesy ofPapyrus ProjectCologne.

Early excavators unwrapped both human and animal mummies in hopes of finding such valuable texts.British papyrologists Grenfell and Hunt, who excavated Tebtunis during the winter of 1899-1900 for theUniversity of California with funding from Phoebe A. Hearst, recovered over 30,000 papyrus text fragmentsfrom mummies. Grenfell and Hunts excavations at Tebtunis included a large crocodile cemeteryassociated with a temple dedicated to Sobek.

Photograph of crocodile mummies excavated at Tebtunis, 1900. Courtesy of the Egypt ExplorationSociety.

Only 31 of the roughly 1,000 crocodile mummies excavated by Grenfell and Hunt yielded papyrusfragments, which are now housed with the rest of the collection at the Bancroft library at UC Berkeley. Weassume that 5-513 was also unwrapped in an effort to find papyri. Both the wrapped and the unwrappedPAHMA crocodile mummies require conservation treatment so that they can be safely transported forfurther study and exhibited. Right now we are learning as much as possible about how the crocodiles weremummified and how their constituent materials have deteriorated, and deciding how best to stabilize them.Stay tuned as we discover more about these mummies, and go about conserving them.

Posted by Allison on Tuesday, December 1, 2009, at 10:45 am. Filed under Historical background,Mummies and mummification. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. You canpost a comment or trackback from your blog.