Mummies uncovered in Budapest
Interdisciplinary research in the Egyptian Collection, Museum of Fine Arts
MúzeumCafé 24.
In spring 2011 the Museum of Fine Arts launched a comprehensive programme called Budapest Mummy Project to analyse four mummified bodies in its collection, thus connecting with modern mummy research conducted across the world in recent decades. In the 19th century collecting ancient Egyptian artefacts flourished and the first Egyptian mummies turned up in Hungary. In 1934 an ancient Egyptian collection was established as part of the Antiquities Section in Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts. It comprised some 1200 Egyptian items. One result of bringing together the various collections was that two mummified bodies were acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts from the Hungarian National Museum. The funerary objects had previously been owned by István Delhaes, a Hungarian painter and art collector living in Vienna. In 1951 another mummy was added to the Museum of Fine Arts’ collection. The Savaria Museum had a man’s mummified body with its coffin transported to the museum in Budapest from the laboratory of the Nagy Lajos Grammar School in Szombathely (hence its designation as the ‘Szombathely Mummy’). Yet it is not only Budapest museums which have mummies in Hungary. The Déri Museum in Debrecen has two mummified bodies which were bought by Frigyes Déri, whose name the museum bears, from the collection of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and in the town of Pápa the collections of the Transdanubian Calvinist Church include a mummy and its coffin. For analysing the four mummies in the collection of the Fine Arts Museum the Budapest Mummy Project aimed to apply the most appropriate methods from among the many available methodological processes. Led by Dr Kinga Karlinger, CT scanning of the four mummified bodies was conducted on two occasions at the Semmelweis University’s Clinic of Radiology and Oncotherapeutics, and was based on a long term co-operation agreement established between the Museum of Fine Arts and the university. In addition to facilitating analysis of the various techniques of mummification, the radiological images taken of the mummies represent primary sources for anthropological research. Historical anthropology is a science related to the research of human remains from the archaeological age, and principally involves examination of the morphological and metric characteristics of bones. In Egyptology the work of Australian physician Grafton Elliot Smith represented a milestone in the anthropological research of mummies, including the mapping of the royal mummies held in Cairo. Within historical anthropology, palaeopathology studies the pathological changes in ancient human remains. Besides anthropological research, Armand Ruffer, professor of bacteriology at Cairo University, contributed to developing the palaeopathological research of mummies. He opened up the opportunity of histological examinations by developing the method of rehydrating ancient tissues. The anthropological analysis included in the Budapest Mummy Project was headed by Erzsébet Fóthi, researcher at the Natural History Museum.