Sculpture gives life to Egyptian mummy

A nationally known forensic sculptor created the likeness.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA BUREAU
NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- For the past 121 years, Lady Pesed has rested silently on the campus of Westminster College behind the mask of her sarcophagus.
It was only Tuesday that the 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy's likeness came to life in the form of a bust created by a forensic sculptor and shown for the first time in public.
The unveiling revealed a well-aged woman with broad features.
Egyptologist Jonathan Elias, who has been working with the mummy for the past five years, said he was surprised by the likeness, having had a different picture of a woman in his mind.
"I had a different sense of how she would appear," Elias said. "If you see the image of her [through the CT scans], the appearance is very different."
Elias, however, trusts the abilities of forensic sculptor Frank Bender, who is noted for helping authorities reconstruct the faces of murder victims.
He also constructs likenesses of suspects, including one of fugitive John List who escaped authorities for 18 years after killing his entire family. List was apprehended 11 days after Bender's bust of the aged man appeared on national television.
Location
Pesed's likeness eventually will be placed on a pedestal in the Westminster College Mack Science Library next to her sarcophagus, said Samuel Farmerie, curator of the college's cultural artifacts.
Farmerie, too, was taken aback by her appearance.
"When I first saw her, I thought there were an awful lot of wrinkles," he said.
But Farmerie then took a closer look at women he knew in their 70s and realized that Pesed's likeness was most accurate.
The mummy, which was bought by Presbyterian missionaries for $8 in 1885, is believed to have been somewhere between 55 and 70 at the time of her death. CT scans and X-rays taken about five years ago revealed she suffered from abscesses in her jaw that likely led to her death and was missing 60 percent of her teeth.
She also had much bone degeneration as well as a dowager's hump.
Elias said the scans also revealed well-exercised leg muscles, which indicate she may have been a temple dancer in her younger days. Pesed is believed to have come from a long line of well-established Egyptian priests and priestesses, according to writings on her sarcophagus.
Last summer additional scans of Pesed were taken at College Fields MRI near Westminster's campus and the 2,500 images sent to the University of Manitoba in Canada to construct a digitally produced skull. That skull was forwarded to Bender to create the bust. No invasive procedures were done on the mummy's remains, Farmerie said.
City being studied
The bust and scans of Pesed are part of a larger project aimed at studying the ancient people of Akhmim, a city about 235 miles south of Cairo, where Pesed lived. She and several other mummies are under study by the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium led by Elias.
Pesed is the second Akhmim mummy to have her face reconstructed by Bender for the group.
Elias said another Akhmim mummy from this region will be scanned this month, and there are plans to create two more likenesses of Akhmim mummies this summer. Those mummies are in Milwaukee, he said.
The projects are paid for by dues of consortium members and benefactors' donations. The consortium consists of Westminster College, the Reading [Pa.] Public Museum and the Milwaukee Public Museum. Research partners include the University of Manitoba and North Dakota State University.
cioffi@vindy.com