The Mummyof Wah Unwrapped H. E. Winlock From The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (December 1940)

The digging in Egypt was about over The first photograph gave us a sud- in March 1920, and we had already den surprise. From Wah's neck, down made the surprising discovery of the over his chest, and about his wrists funerary models of Meketra (dis- crossed in front, there was a whole in the cussed in the preceding article) when series of objects clear enough We could our men, clearing up the ruined portico x-ray to be easily identified. beads around of his big tomb, unexpectedly struck recognize strings of the buried entrance of a little tomb his neck, a broad bead collar over his which had been under it. Rough breast, bracelets and anklets on his arms and and steps going down had been success- legs, extraordinarily scarabs near his wrists. fully hidden with shale chips, and the large door was still blocked little tomb we wanted to this with a stout brick but once that Naturally, put wall, on exhibition, but at the same had been removed we found our- jewelry time we wanted to the rock-cut room preserve selves in a narrow, and so it was decided which no one had seen for mummy, finally nearly to take careful notes and detailed centuries. At the back there forty before it was unwrapped, was a coffin the name of a photographs bearing and then to make a faithful replica certain and in it, under a of Wah, pile with its own mask and bandages after laundered bed linen, a mummy lay we had removed the jewelry. with wrappings still as fresh as the day it had been buried. The outermost piece of linen on Wah's 1) was a shawl, The meal of beer and bread and meat mummy (Figure wrapped kilt-like about him, with its beside the coffin was so simple, and around his waist tucked in the fringed edge so were the few objects coffin, in in front. It had often been to the that there seemed little likelihood it is now but had doubt- of value inside laundry; pink of there being anything less once been a henna red; and down Wah's we bandages. Furthermore, the front are two very washed-out had found his title written in ink on lines of hieroglyphs, written in black, the bed sheets and knew that some of which read: "Linen of the temple he was an "Overseer of a simply Nytankhsekhmet, the justi- and since this was not protecting Storehouse," fied." What temple was meant, or the sort of who be person might who the person Nytankhsekhmet to be buried with so expected jewels, may have been, we probably shall as it was far our experience went, never know, for she is not mentioned decided not to him but to unwrap on anything else we ever found. show his mummy in the Museum, just as it was found. After we had taken off the kilt we unwound a dozen bandages spiraling For fifteen years the mummy of Wah had been on exhibition alongside the funerary models of his employer Wah it was Meketra, when it was used in some 1. The mummy of before experiments with an x-ray apparatus. unwrapped

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin ® www.jstor.org up and down the mummy, each about laid on it, perhaps because it had as wide as one's hand and several been put on at the end of one day's nearly forty feet long. Then came work and had become hard by morn- sheets wrapped around, or big pieces ing, when the next wrappings had of linen folded as pads and laid on been wound on. When we had re- to fill the mummy out until it was moved it, the bandages it had pene- practically a cylinder. Later we came trated, and another dozen sheets and to a layer of bandages streaked with pads, we came to the first of Wah's the very thin dregs of a pot of resin, jewelry (Figure 6). probably smeared on with incanta- There were four bead each tions for Wah's continued existence, necklaces, with its cords tied behind the for its purpose must have been magic nape of his neck There was a - it could have had no preservative (Figure 5). effect. A score more of sheets and string of 11 big, hollow, silver spheroid beads little pads were then unwrapped, and Wah, separated by cylinders, and another of 28 smaller ones from having been a very stout party, string of A third was of 48 blue was becoming more and more slender, gold. string faience ball and a fourth of and the face which had been peeking beads, 28 and oval beads of out of thick folds of linen now ap- cylindrical moss peared as part of a stucco mask ex- carnelian, amethyst, agate, milky black and white tending down to his waist (Figure 2). quartz, porphyry, and green glazed steatite. The dents The pinched little face was gilded, in the hollow metal beads and the and on it were painted a thin mous- fraying of the cords of the silver and tache and, around the jowls, scant of the faience necklaces show that whiskers. A highly conventionalized at least three of these strings had wig, striped light blue and dark green, actually been worn by Wah or by covered the head, and a crudely I0 some of his family. painted broad collar with red, blue, Half a dozen more and and green rows of beads was shown bandages pads and then we came to more suspended on the brown chest. It jewelry. Another of 45 blue faience was a barbarous-looking affair, but string deep after all, Thebes was still a rather ball beads had simply been bundled and laid on the countrified, Upper Egyptian town together mummy's when Wah died, and this mask was chest, and over his crossed arms there had been four scarabs. clearly bought from one of the more placed large old-fashioned of the local artisans. One was of plain blue faience, with- out any inscription or other device, and When we had taken off the mask and strung simply on a short hank of linen ten more sheets and pads, we came threads. The other three are among to another layer of resin, thick and the surprises of our Egyptian work. black this time, poured all over the front of the body except the head and 2. After many layers of wrappings face (Figure 3). It had been prac- were taken off, Wah's stucco mask tically dry when the pads had been was uncovered 3 (left). Thick, black resin had been poured over this layer of Wah's A;L j : ,

wrappings * tA < F t lE o ]t~:: 4 (right). The larger silver scarab: the lead had been deliberately damaged 5 (below). Wah's necklaces

Two are of massive silver and the mummy the faces of both the silver lazuli one had third of lapis lazuli. The larger silver scarabs and of the lapis scarab (Figure 4) is 11/ inches long been purposely and methodically m and the smaller, 11/ inches; each was hammered and pecked as though to after the made up of separate pieces, molded blind them. Then, blinding, and chased and then soldered to- each scarab was strung on a stout one The lapis lazuli scarab is 176 linen cord with barrel-shaped gether. which ob- inches long and perfectly plain, but on and one cylindrical bead, the bases of the two silver ones there viously made them into amulets to Wah some of the are graceful, meandering scrolls protect against of the life to come. But interspersed with hieroglyphs which many perils what? This is another of our made easily recognizable seal devices. against Both silver scarabs were oxidized, unanswered riddles. Such amulets never been found before, and and when we began to clean the have in the friezes one we found hieroglyphs skill- they are shown painted larger the coffins inlaid on its back in gold, inside only two of many fully pale in those on the one wing reading, "The of Wah's time, unfortunately Nobleman Meketra," and on the neither case named or explained. other, "The Overseer of a Storehouse Wah"- the names of the owner of Next we unwrapped half a dozen large the scarab and the noble for whom bandages and twice as many pads he worked. The scratches and dents and sheets, each one more stained than the last. the on the polished surfaces of this silver with resin Clearly seal scarab and its smaller mate, and linen we were now taking off had while the wear in their gold string-holes been put over a third resin layer we showed that they had seen real use. it was still soft, and when got stuck fast in it But it was surprising to find that just down to it we found of before they had been put on the a broad collar ( Figures 7, 8) green- 6. The mummy showing the first of Wah's jewelry: necklaces made of silver, gold, faience, and semiprecious stones (also illustrated as the four lower necklaces in Figure 5)

ish blue beads on Wah's chest and whatever width they required at was the resin matching bracelets on his wrists and the moment. Nearby ankles. All were stiff with the resin pot, and sometimes the resin got which saturated them, and tight band- splashed on the heap of linen and it was from aging had crumpled up the collar, sometimes wiped sticky but but soaking in alcohol made them all fingers on the pile of sheets, careful not pliable once more, and their stringing the embalmers were very needed very little reinforcement to get any on the bandages that were before they were ready for exhibition. going to show or any pitchy finger- prints on the part of the mask that was What we had found so far had seen not going to be covered up. A dead actual use in Wah's lifetime. Here we mouse and linen resin swabs were had objects made expressly for the dropped on the mummy's knees and tomb and in the style of centuries hidden under the next bandages. long gone by even in Wah's day, and What we had taken for another perhaps this explains why they had mouse was much less distinct in the been put on the body in a perfunctory x-ray: it turned out to be a little house and careless way. The cords of the lizard, of a kind still common in broad collar had only been twisted Egypt, and a cricket was in the same together behind the nape of the neck, v4 a~ "? pitch layer beside the broad bead and not tied, and there had been a collar. good deal of confusion over the brace- last. c i ;~~ lets. There were eight of these Linen was costly and was an important Two were tied on each ankle, and form of wealth: in all we unwound one then, by some mistake which no 375 square meters of linen from the the noticed, a third was put on right mummy, and, if we add the sheets we undertakers ankle. Thus, when the found in the coffin and two pieces began putting bracelets on the wrists, which had covered it in the funeral three and the last they had only left, procession, the total from the tomb on the of these they simply dropped of Wah comes to 845 square meters - resin went on body in the soft and about 1,010 square yards. Much of it their with bandaging. had been torn up to make convenient- sized but there were still still had of wrappings, We quantities bandages some sheets which varied take but there was complete and sheets to off, from a shawl 100 inches to remove. We fringed long only one more object to a bed 84 feet the that an covering long. They had thought from x-ray had shrunk in oval seal was on a of the left probably repeated finger for this was old household but what we found washings, hand, actually shawls and bed saved there was an oval seweret bead of red linen, coverings for the day of need, or procured from carnelian such as was usually put on friends and relatives or perhaps even the throat of a mummy. Why this bought of strangers for the occasion. one was laid in Wah's palm is still another puzzle. In the corners of at least sixty of these While we were unwrapping the sheets there had been written in ink mummy we had it up on two car- a hieroglyphic sign or two which told penter's sawhorses; the Egyptians its quality, and often in the opposite who wrapped it probably had it up corer, the owner's name. For some on blocks of wood while they squatted reason there seems to have been an beside it on a wide wooden platform. objection to letting linen go to the Alongside they had great heaps of tomb so marked, and therefore most old linen bed sheets, which they tore of the little labels had been torn out. as they needed into pieces about nine This was done during the actual feet long or into strips of bandage of wrapping of the mummy, but so care- 7. Another layer of resin-soaked wrappings on Wah's mummy, with a broad collar of greenish blue beads (shown in Figure 8) and matching bracelets on his wrists and ankles

8. The faience broad collar

A -40H,. that three of the torn-out the second half of the twelve- 41 lessly king's AoW corners got rolled on the mummy year reign, or about 2002 B.C. with the bandages, and one-third of 4 the marks were entirely overlooked It only remained to find out what we and not torn out at all. Half a dozen could from the body of Wah himself, gave the names of various people and in this we had the co-operation for whom they had originally been of Dr. Harry L. Shapiro of the Amer- woven, and eleven sheets bore the ican Museum of Natural History. Wah name of Wah himself. One was turned out to be a youngish man marked with his name only. Two were about thirty years old, who had under- marked with his name and the date gone a primitive mummification. His "Year2." Then come three sheets brain was probably left in place, and of "Year5," three of "Year6," and two the embalmers seem to have left his others without any year, all marked viscera intact above the diaphragm. "The Overseer of a Storehouse Wah." Below that level they appear to have It looks as though it had been be- removed them, apparently through tween the second and fifth years of an incision in his lower abdomen. The Seankhkara that Wah got the job of more or less prolonged soaking had manager of Meketra's storehouses, made Wah's flesh so soft that too tight and as there are no higher dates than a bandaging made a very narrow the sixth year, he probably died in bundle of his body.