With over two thousand years mummy comes from the excavations carried out in 1907 in el-Gamhud by the first Polish Egyptologist, Tadeusz Smoleński. The goddess Isis – Aset-iri-khet-es – lies in a sarcophagus with an impressive lid. Through research conducted in 1996 it found that it was a young woman who died approx. two thousand 300 years ago as a result of blood loss caused by arterial puncture fractured leg. Specialists able to determine, among others, the genetic code of the deceased and her blood type. It is the largest in terms of the size of the object from the collection of Egyptology in Poland and is best examined by specialists.
Mummy was carefully wrapped in resinated bandage, the crossing bands created a geometrical pattern. The upper part was formed to resemble the head of a cat with all details being marked on it. X-ray made of the mummy have revealed no mummified remains under the bandages; inside are bones of an animal. In order to provide stiffness the cat's skeleton was stiffed by a stick. Animals were mummified in Egypt for different reasons. A haunch from an ox or some other animal, dipped in salt and wrapped in bandages, was put in a wooden coffin of appropriate shape to serve as food for the deceased in the Netherworld. Mummified pets – monkeys, dogs, even gazelles and ducks – were placed inside the funerary chamber, sometimes inside the coffin with their dead owner.
Mummy was carefully wrapped in resinated bandage, the crossing bands created geometrical pattern. In the upper part it is formed to resemble the head of a falcon with all the essential details being marked on it. X-ray made of the mummy have revealed no mummified remains under the bandages; inside are the bones of an animal. The falcon's skeleton being mixed with, as paleontologist have discovered, the bones of a frog and lizard, presumably the bird's last meal.
The shroud was purchased from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo by soldiers of the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade during WW II and granted to the Archaeological Museum. The right side of the shroud represents the deceased person as Osiris. The head in a wig is decorated with a crown of ostrich feathers with a solar disk placed on the horns with uraei on the sides.
The representation on the bandages illustrates a fragment of chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, the scene of “weighing hearts”. The Book is a set of formulas and spells, which are supposed to help the deceased to achieve eternal life in another world and to put down the demons of darkness, but foremost to be favourably judged of Osiris. The figures shown on the bandages, usually 42 of them, picture the Egyptian nomes, which functioned simultaneously as religious centers. The judges of the Tribunal of Two Justices are the same time the guardians of the sinners.
The object was purchased from Mohareb Zaaki by soldiers of the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade during WW II. The mummy has a gilded wax mask. The sarcophagus with the head of Horus and a striated wig on the breast bear the necklace composed of a chapel with Ibis inside.
“Pseudo-mummy”, formed of Nile silt mixed with resin and germinating seeds, molded and then wrapped in linen bandages. Silver mask with traces of gilding in the place of the face. Eyes marked with drawn out corners, eyebrows painted brown, small nose and prominent ears. The crown of Upper Egypt on its head and a hole for the beard in the chin. Silver masks, unlike the waxen ones, are extremely rare in this kind of objects.
