hn ntr The Hieroglyphic for "Priest"

The "Darlington Mummy"

The "Darlington Mummy"is so called as it resided there in a museum for many years until it eventually made its way to the Gulbenkian Oriental Museum in Durham, Great Britain which is where I met the gentleman in 1972.   He was a bit of a wandering Egyptian as before that he was resident in Penrith given by a nice lady to add to their collection.  The following extract from a newspaper seems as good a place to start his history on this page.  As well as being quite fun seems to be written as if they knew about what the High Priest Imhotep would get up to on  film in America with the release of the original The Mummy in 1932. Mummies had become a liability!

Penrith Herald 18th Jan 1930

"The slump in Egyptian mummies seems to be complete ...  Penrith has one, which it is anxious to give away, but so far various approaches to Egyptological and museum authorites in London and elsewhere have been anything but encouraging.  None of them want the thing, even as a gift. Indeed the tone of the letter is so decisive and so final the it leaves one with the impression that they would not be paid to take it away." 'Silverpen'

Facts about the Darlington Mummy

The mummy is a lot younger than Imhotep. He is from the 3rd century BC while Imhotep is a lot older than that. This makes the Darlington Mummy from the time when the Greeks or even the Romans were in Egypt. He may not have known Seti or Ramses but he may have known about Cleopatra.

The Darlington Mummy is male, this was not known for a while and he was thought to be a princess for a time!  We now consider him to be priest, this is because the heiroglyph ntr is just visible on part of the legs of the case.  Water damage has made everything else there impossible to read, infact it has taken the case down to bare wood here.  The ntr sign is thought to be part of the word nm ntr which makes the mummy a priest as this means 'servant of the god' which was what they were known as in Egypt.

At some time in his life the priest lost his left hand. Various types of examinations including x-rays and opening up is bandages have happened over this time at the museum in Durham, the most recent in 1967. He is thought to have been somewhat of a sickly soul (hence is small size) and possibly this was part of the problem with his hand - this we do not know.  What we do know is that he was given a prosthetic hand to go off into the afterlife with - made by the embalmers out of bandages.  This mean that in the fields of Osiris he would HAVE a whole hand. Such things were often done, artificial feet, legs and even teeth have turned up on other mummies.

In 1967 work was involved to remove the prosthetic hand of the Darlingon Mummy so it could be put on show.  This has been done and any visitors to the museum can now see this as it has been placed on top of his mummy in his display case.

ruthhkenyon@yahoo.com

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