Nesyamun

Nesyamun (Ancient Egyptian: Ns-imn[4]) was a priest and scribe working within the Egyptian temple complex of Karnak in Thebes. His name means "the one belonging to Amun".[5] His most senior titles related to the cult of Montu, the Theban war god, as "god's father of Montu" and "scribe of the temple of Montu." He also had roles within the wider temple complex as "scribe who lays out offerings for all the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt", and "scribe who keeps tally of the cattle of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu."[6] He was also an incense-bearer and possibly a wab-priest.[7][Note 1]

Nothing is known of his family and no mention is made of them in the inscriptions on his coffin.[6] According to the 1854 museum guidebook, inscriptions from his tomb mentioned that Nesyamun married the daughter of Amenemtephis who held one of the highest positions at the "Memnonium".[9][Note 2] Nesyamun's son succeeded his grandfather Amenemtephis in this role.[10] Nesyamun died in approximately 1100 BC and was buried in cemetery of priests and priestesses of Amun in the causeway of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple Deir el-Bahari.[3][11]

The coffined body of Nesyamun was rediscovered in 1822 or 1823 by Italian trader Giuseppe Passalacqua during his excavations of the Deir el-Bahari causeway. He was then sent, with another mummy, from Egypt to Trieste in 1823.[12] Nesyamun was bought in 1823 in London by antiquities dealer William Bullock from another man who had purchased and transported the mummy to England.[13] In 1824 he was bought for the final time by the banker John Blayds for the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society's museum.[14] Nesyamun was their second mummy, as the mummy of "Pethor", excavated at Thebes by Henry Salt in 1822, was obtained in February of 1823.[15]

Nesyamun's coffin was opened in late 1824 and his mummy was investigated by members of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.[16] Published in 1828, his autopsy was "one of the earliest scientific examinations to be undertaken on an Egyptian mummy."[17] The report was multidisciplinary, noting how the body was unwrapped and autopsied, the features of the mummy, with notes made on the wrappings and artefacts within them, and described and attempted a translation and explanation of the hieroglyphic texts and scenes on the coffin.[17] His name was rendered as "Natsif-Amon".[18]

He was placed on display on the first floor of the museum and is mentioned in the 1854 guidebook under the name "Ensa-Amoun".[9] From the 1860s he was displayed in the vestibule. In the 1890s, the coffin and mummy were examined by the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who stated that the coffins dated to the reign of Amenhotep III but were reused for a later mummy of the reign of Ramesses XII. In the 1930s he was moved and redisplayed in a new case.[19] Nesyamun was the only mummy without significant damage after the Leeds Blitz bombing of 15 March 1941 destroyed the front half of the museum. The bomb blast destroyed the red leather ornament found within his wrappings, broke his mummy cover into pieces and covered his body in debris but the coffin trough and lid sustained only minor damage. The two other mummies held by the museum were destroyed in the blast.[20][21] In the late 1960s Nesyamun was moved to the new museum building.[20]

In 1990, the Director of Leeds City Museum invited the Manchester Mummy Team led by Rosalie David to undertake a new scientific study of Nesyamun.[22] In 1973, the multi-disciplinary team began researching the living conditions, diseases, and causes of death of the ancient Egyptian population, and also to establish formal, non-destructive methods of examining mummified remains.[23] The International Mummy Database founded at the Manchester Museum in 1979 is recognised as the major centre for the collection and storage of mummy-related information.

Since 2002, the Leeds Museum has been documenting and researching both the decoration upon the coffin, and the coffin itself. This has led to a greater understanding of the nature of the roles that Nesyamun, as a priest at the temple of Karnak, would have played.

In 2008, the mummy was moved to a new home at the Leeds City Museum.

Nesyamun's preserved body was entombed in a high quality wooden coffin inscribed with hieroglyphs.[24] It is likely constructed of multiple pieces of sycomore fig wood smoothed over with gypsum plaster.[25][26] The background colour is yellow and the texts and scenes are executed in bright colours.[25] The coffin is mummiform in shape and depicts Nesyamun wearing a large wig encircled with a floral fillet and topped with lotus flowers. He had a short beard on his chin which is depicted in the 1828 publication but has since broken off. Across his chest is a broad collar with a central scarab. His arms are crossed over his chest and he wears bracelets at the wrists and elbows. His hands are fisted, as is typical for male coffins of this era.[27] The hands presumably held amulets, likely ankhs, tyet-knots, or djed-pillars but are no longer present.[28] Below the arms is a solar barque in which Amun-Re rides, and immediately below is the kneeling goddess Nut with outstretched wings.[29][26]

The lid is divided with central and horizontal bands of text mimicking the placement of the wide bands seen on mummy wrappings. The space between the inscriptions is filled with scenes of Nesyamun presenting offerings to various funerary gods including Ra-Horakhty, Osiris, and the four sons of Horus.[30] Nesyamun's name and titles were not added into blanks in a pre-made coffin but written all in one, probably by a single person based on the consistent handwriting.[24] The decorative scheme is divided into "eastern" and "western" themes between the left and right sides on the lid and trough with the depiction of paired day and night forms of gods.[31] Isis and Nephthys are depicted individually at their respective head and foot ends of the coffin, and both appear on the top of the feet and adoring a djed-pillar on the foot board of the trough.[32] The central vertical lid inscription addresses the goddess Nut, asking for eternal life and to not die a second death.[29] The left and right vertical columns ask to be able to go out to see the sun and to join the gods Osiris and Sokar and receive offerings. The rest of the inscriptions follow a similar theme, asking for offerings and freedom of movement to see the gods.[33] One text asks specifically to attend a festival of the god Sokar, with "onions at my neck the day of going round the walls."[34] The underside of coffin base is undecorated, as is the interior, which is painted black.[27]

The mummy cover[Note 3] depicts Nesyamun wrapped in white fabric like a mummy. It again has the likeness of the deceased, wearing a wig and floral headband. Across his chest is a broad collar and winged scarab. Below is a barque carrying a solar scarab flanked by Isis and Nephthys.[26] Again, Nut is depicted kneeling below, spreading her wings protectively. Its inscriptions are similar to those on the coffin, with two columns of vertical hieroglyphs invoking the goddess Nut with the same text as the coffin lid.[35]

The coffin is generally in good condition. A crack runs down the body on the proper right side and modern repairs are evident on the lid at the feet, right shoulder, and left edge, which obscures the text. The mummy cover was badly damaged in a bomb blast in 1941. It was originally white but is now painted black, possibly to hide damage.[24]

In 2020, after Nesyamun's throat and trachea were found to be remarkably well-preserved, scientists were able to reconstruct and simulate how the priest's voice may have sounded.[60][61] Piero Cosi, a speech scientist who in 2016 was part of a team which roughly reconstructed the voice of another widely studied mummy, Ötzi, maintained that the reconstruction was largely speculative even with Nesyamun's almost perfectly preserved vocal tract.[62] Scholars have debated the ethics and value of the project.[63]

• Brears, P. C. D. (1992). "The Dental Examination of Natsef-Amun". In David, A. R.; Tapp, E. (eds.). The Mummy's Tale: The Scientific and Medical Investigation of Natsef-Amun, Priest in the Temple at Karnak (1993 US ed.). New York : St. Martin's Press. pp. 112–120. ISBN 978-0-312-09061-6.
• Cardin, Matt, ed. (2015). Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO. pp. 327–328. ISBN 978-1-61069-420-9.
• David, A. Rosalie, ed. (1979). The Manchester Museum Mummy Project : multidisciplinary research on ancient Egyptian mummified remains (PDF). Manchester, England: Manchester Museum. ISBN 0-7190-1293-7. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
• David, A. R. (1992a). "The Discovery and 1828 Autopsy of Natsef-Amun". In David, A. R.; Tapp, E. (eds.). The Mummy's Tale: The Scientific and Medical Investigation of Natsef-Amun, Priest in the Temple at Karnak (1993 US ed.). New York : St. Martin's Press. pp. 55–64. ISBN 978-0-312-09061-6.
• David, A. R. (1992b). "Natsef-Amun's Life as a Priest". In David, A. R.; Tapp, E. (eds.). The Mummy's Tale: The Scientific and Medical Investigation of Natsef-Amun, Priest in the Temple at Karnak (1993 US ed.). New York : St. Martin's Press. pp. 65–79. ISBN 978-0-312-09061-6.
• David, A. Rosalie (2005). "Natsef-Amun, keeper of the bulls: a comparative study of the paleopathology and archaeology of an Egyptian mummy". Journal of Biological Research - Bollettino della Società Italiana di Biologia Sperimentale. 80 (1). doi:10.4081/jbr.2005.10177. ISSN 2284-0230. S2CID 239525800.
• David, A. R.; Tapp, E. (1992). The Mummy's Tale : the scientific and medical investigation of Natsef-Amun, priest in the temple at Karnak (1993 US ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-09061-6. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
• Howard, D. M.; Schofield, J.; Fletcher, J.; Baxter, K.; Iball, G. R.; Buckley, S. A. (23 January 2020). "Synthesis of a Vocal Sound from the 3,000 year old Mummy, Nesyamun 'True of Voice'". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 45000. Bibcode:2020NatSR..1045000H. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-56316-y. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 6978302. PMID 31974412.
• Lewis, Sophie (23 January 2020). "Listen to the sound of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
• Malsbury, Erin (23 January 2020). "The dead speak! Scientists re-create voice of 3000-year-old mummy". Science. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
• Matić, Uroš (June 2021). "Talk like an Egyptian? Epistemological problems with the synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of Nesyamun and racial designations in mummy studies". Archaeological Dialogues. 28 (1): 37–49. doi:10.1017/S1380203821000076.
• Osburn, William (1828). An Account of an Egyptian Mummy, Presented to the Museum of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. Leeds: Robinson & Hernaman. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
• Porter, Bertha; Moss, Rosalind L. B. (1964). Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings I: The Theban Necropolis Part 2: Royal Tombs and Smaller Cemeteries (Second ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
• Ranke, Hermann (1935). Die Ägyptischen Personennamen, Bd. 1: Verzeichnis der Namen (PDF). Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin.
• Sheerin, Joseph (22 April 2019). "3 Forgotten Stories From Leeds' Past". Leeds-List. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
• Wassell, Belinda (2008). The Coffin of Nesyamun, the "Leeds mummy" : (LEEDM. D.1960.426). Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. ISBN 1-870737-21-0.