Mummy Bandages

Three small samples of linen mummy wrapping cut away from a mummified body removed from the coffins of Ditamunpaseneb, daughter of Yufa, on 30th March 1903 and unwrapped before an audience at the Liverpool Free Public Museums (now World Museum) by museum director Henry Ogg Forbes. This was one of a series three lectures on ‘Egyptian Antiquities’ given by the Director of Museums, Henry Ogg Forbes, from 16 to 30 March 1903. Two pieces are of the same texture and colour; and one other is finer and paler in colour. There is also a newspaper cutting referring to the lecture and unwrapping on 30/3/1903 (kept in the object History File). The bandages were donated back to the museum in 1987 by Mr. K. W. Burns, whose grandfather was a member of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and was presumably in attendance at the 1903 event. According to the Museum Annual Report for 1903 Henry Ogg Forbes, gave a lecture and unwrapped a mummy: “At the lecture of the 30th, the mummy of a lady named Auf-aa of the XXVI. Dynasty (660-590BC) was unwrapped before the audience to illustrate his lecture on ‘The Mummy’. The face was found in a remarkable state of preservation, the hands crossed upon the breast, but the flesh had apparently been removed from the limbs before enswathement of the body. The beautifully manufactured cloth in which it was wrapped, however, had been used for another mummy at a much earlier date.