Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (14.2002(2003))

MARINA EL-ALAMEIN

EGYPT

THE FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE
MARINA EL-ALAMEIN MUMMY

Caroline Wilkinson*)

For nearly a century Egyptian mummy
portraits have been discussed in Egypto-
logical literature, and they have been used
as indicators of hairstyles, jewelry, social
status, etc. Invariably the paintings are
described as “haunting”, “stunning”, or
“unsettling”.') and the emotional appeal of
the portraits is undeniable, in that the
viewer comes face to face with an ancient
Egyptian at a more personal level than even
viewing the actual mummy. As with many
scientific assessments of Egyptian mum-
mies, we can turn to forensic techniques to
help solve the mystery of these enigmatic
portraits. Three-dimensional facial recon-
struction has been used for the past 25 years
in Britain for forensic identification from
skeletal remains, and recently several
studies have been carried out using facial
reconstruction to assess the accuracy, time
of production and artistic techniques of the
mummy portraits. It has been estimated
that there are more than 1000 mummy
portraits,2) but fewer than 100 are still
bound to their mummies.3)

It is possible to reconstruct the face of
an individual onto the dry skull, and
a technique was pioneered in Manchester,
primarily by Richard NeaveA This
technique is based on a combination of the
Russian5’ anatomical approach and the
North American6) tissue depth approach.
Gerasimov, a Russian anthropologist,
developed the ■ anatomical technique by
modeling the facial muscles onto the skull.
His method relied upon the skeletal
structure of the skull for the recreation of
the facial musculature and, therefore, the
facial form. Alternatively, the North
American method, as developed primarily
by Krogman7) and Gatliff,8) relied upon
sets of mean facial tissue depths from
anatomical points over the surface of the
skull, which related to the sex, age and
racial origins of the specimen. The
Manchester method uses these tissue depth
measurements as guides during the
procedure, whilst sculpting the facial
muscles one-by-one onto the skull. In the
cases of Ancient Egyptians with Negroid

*) The University of Manchester, Unit of Art in Medicine
1) C. Katatsaki, “Fayum: Portraits of the Human Soul”, Hermes (July-August, 1999), 36-7; J. Berger, “The Fayum Riddle”.
Doubletake {Spring 1999), 141-143.
2) Berger, op. cit. 12.
3) L H. Corcoran, Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt (Chicago 1995), 3.
4) J. Prag and R.A.FI. Neave, Making Faces (London: British Museum Press 1997).
5) M. Gerasimov, Face Finder (New York 1971).
6) B.P. Gatliff and C.C. Snow, “From skull to visage". Journal of Biocommunication 6(2) (1979), 27-30.
7) W.M. Krogman and M.Y. Iscan, The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine (Illinois: C.C. Thomas Publishers, Illinois 1986).
8) Gatliff, op. cit.

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