In the beginning there was a chilling discovery. The mummy of a young man with his hands and feet tied, his face frozen in an eternal cry of pain. But who is he and why did he scream while dying?
One hot day in late June 1886, Gaston Maspero, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, uncovered the shrouds of mummies of 40 kings and queens, discovered a few years earlier in an amazing hidden cache near the Valley of the Kings.
Opened in 1881, the tomb in the Deir el-Bahri Valley, 300 miles south of Cairo, was unusual and rich. Hidden from the world for centuries, there were the remains of several of the greatest Egyptian pharaohs - Ramses the Great, Seti I and Thutmose III. However, this body, buried with them, was still very different from the others - the mummy lay in a simple, unadorned sarcophagus, on which the name of the deceased was not written.
The strange mummy turned out to be an unexpected puzzle, but after the coffin was opened, Maspero was even more shocked.
There, wrapped in the skin of a sheep or a goat - a ritually unclean object for the ancient Egyptians - lay the body of a young man, with a face forever distorted from a terrible cry. But the strangest thing was another, giving rise to disturbing questions: the mummy was very carefully processed and was in excellent condition, however, at the time of death, this person clearly experienced terrible pain.
He was buried in an enviable environment, but remained nameless, which, according to ancient beliefs, provided him with eternal damnation and oblivion, since the ancient Egyptians believed that a person's name is a kind of password for entering the afterlife. In addition, his arms and legs were tied so tightly that the marks from the ropes even remained on his bones.
An autopsy performed by doctors in 1886 in the presence of Maspero did little to help solve the mystery of such a strange death.
One of the doctors, Daniel Fouquet, believed that the compressed shape of his abdomen indicated that the young man had been poisoned. In his report, he wrote: "The last convulsions of terrible agony are clearly visible even after thousands of years." However, the state of science at the time was unable to help figure out why.
Even comparing all these facts with historical documents allowed experts to only speculate. Some believed that "Man E" (as he was called) was the son of the traitorous Pharaoh Ramses III, who took part in a coup to remove his father and seize power. Others believed he was an Egyptian ruler who died abroad and was returned to his homeland for burial. Some believe that the unconventional way of mummifying him indicates that he was not an Egyptian at all, but a member of the rival Hittite dynasty who died on Egyptian soil.
Pharaoh Ramses III
All explanations were possible, but the true identity of "Man E", it seemed, was destined to remain a mystery.
Today, nearly 130 years after the discovery of his body, a team of scientists has decided to use the wonders of modern forensic methods to solve a long-standing mystery.
Using modern technologies, including computed tomography, face reconstruction using X-rays, experts carefully studied the mummy, they discovered new evidence that could reveal his identity. All of this was done under the watchful eye of the television team Five, which creates a series of documentaries, hoping to unravel some of the greatest Egyptian mysteries.
New evidence suggests that "Man E" is indeed Prince Pentaur, the eldest son of Ramses III and Queen Teie, who, together with his mother, developed a plan to assassinate the pharaoh and his own accession to the throne.
This theory has a number of supporters. Among them is Dr. Susan Redford, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who points out that an ancient papyrus tells the details of a conspiracy for Teia to remove the throne from Ramses III in favor of her son, who was not officially appointed heir.
The conspiracy appeared to be supported by a number of high-ranking dignitaries who believed that Pentaur had a legitimate claim to the throne.
“The papyrus tells us that the conspiracy was discovered very quickly and that the conspirators were put on trial,” explains Dr. Redford. “They were all sentenced to death, but the papyrus also says that Pentaur escaped that fate. Perhaps because of his royal status, he was allowed to commit suicide.”Almost certainly he did so, says Redford, and took poison.
However, other finds noted by experts in 1886 made it possible to dispute the fact that the body really belonged to Pentaur. for example, such an assumption. Since "Man E" was buried with intact, that is, not extracted, internal organs, which was extremely unusual even in relation to a traitor, he could be mummified in a completely different place. Egyptian.
Some scholars believe that the body may have belonged to a Hittite prince. Their hypothesis is based on a letter written by the widow of Tutankhamun. Pharaoh died without leaving an heir, and his wife appealed to the then king of the Hittites to allow her to marry one of his sons, who would become king and ensure her further rule.
Researchers believe that "Man E" was the prince who went to Egypt to meet his new bride, but fell victim to a cruel and bloody fate.
However, today's forensic findings challenge this theory: modern 3D scans have convincingly shown that the mummy was completely "gutted", as was usually done when it came to important Egyptians.
In addition, the new analysis of the condition of his joints and teeth also sweeps aside previous theories about the age of the mummified man at the time of his death: Fouquet believed that he was in his early 20s, and then he would be too young for Pentaur. Now, scientists have proved: the deceased was about 40 years old, which fully corresponds to the age of the son of Ramses III.
The complete reconstruction of his face suggests the same idea. "Man E" was strong and handsome, with a prominent nose and a long jaw - these features in no way correspond to the appearance of the Hittite.
The Egyptians had elongated faces and elongated skulls, exactly the same as those of "Man E". This allows us to suggest with almost 100% certainty that this is the mummy of an ancient Egyptian.
There are, of course, anomalies - for example, the sheepskin in which the mummy was wrapped and a non-standard way of burying it nameless. But if we are talking about a traitorous son, then why not …
