Symbols on a Mysterious 2500-Yr-Old Coffin Hint Remains Are of a Female High Priestess in Ancient Egypt

Several excavation works have been carried out in Egypt over the years to dig up remnants from the ancient days in the region. In 2018, Australian academics from the University of Sydney got hold of a mysterious coffin that was thought to contain the remains of a prestigious individual who was mummified. The discovery provided a great opportunity to scientists for testing the mummified remains of an ancient cadaver.

The 2,500-year-old coffin was acquired by the university about 150 years ago after which, several studies conducted on it declared that the case was empty. However, this was not true and in later research works, academics removed the lid of the coffin to discover the tattered remains of a mummy. "We can start asking some intimate questions that those bones will hold around pathology, about diet, about diseases, about the lifestyle of that person - how they lived and died," Jamie Fraser, the senior curator at the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney, said in a statement. Most of the time, whole mummies were left typically intact, preventing experts from gathering more knowledge about them.

"Adding to the potential rewards is the possibility that the remains are those of a distinguished woman of an age where little is known," Fraser mentioned. "We know from the hieroglyphs that Mer-Neith-it-es worked in the Temple of Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess. There are some clues in hieroglyphs, the way the mummification has been done, and the style of the coffin that tell us about how this Temple of Sekhmet may have worked." The hieroglyphs hinted that the occupant of the coffin was a female named Mer-Neith-it-es and was possibly a high priestess at the temple around 600 B.C. when native Egyptians ruled Egypt. ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ 

Fraser also talked to Muse Magazine and revealed the researcher's assumptions about the mummy getting stolen by grave robbers in the past. The only thing they left behind was tattered bandages and fragments from the mummified body that remained untouched so far. "Far from residual scraps, the coffin was filled with a miscellany of bones, bandages, beads, and other materials. Imagine this coffin has been shaken like a cocktail shaker, and you can perhaps picture the jumble of remains inside," Fraser told Muse.ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ 

"The coffin's torso and head are piled high with layers of bandages and chunks of resin that were poured over the mummy as a preserving agent. A leg bone lies against the coffin's shoulder, rib bones jut erratically from bandages, part of the jaw lies near the coffin's feet," Fraser added. He also explained that he had never excavated an Egyptian tomb before that but the coffin of the supposed priestess was the first of its kind.