ARCE Chicago Chapter: Mummy Mapping as a Tool in Egyptological Research

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Info about Lecture:

Before the onset of the Pandemic and the Covid Age, it seemed that hardly a month passed without a new mummy scan appearing in the news. A CT scan of research on Egyptian mummies has developed steadily since the late 1970s. However, newsworthy the scan stories are, scan images are difficult for non- specialists to read and it can be argued that this has kept mummy studies on the periphery of Egyptology. “Mummy Mapping” is a technique of image presentation that allows non-specialists to see more clearly the kinds of cultural features that scans pick up. Initially developed in 2004 and worked out in greater detail in 2009 in connection with an exhibition mounted at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Mummy Mapping has great promise as a tool for making deeper comparisons of time specific stylistic changes and regional disparities in Egyptian funerary processing. The presentation will discuss the methods, challenges, and joys of current research on Egyptian mummies. 

About Jonathan P. Elias:

JP Elias at work on a forensic sculpture

Elias completed his master’s and PhD at the University of Chicago while doing research on systems of magical inscription appearing on Egyptian coffins. This led to a special interest in the high tech imaging of Egyptian mummies and digital cartography of Egyptian archaeological sites. Dr. Elias currently serves as the Director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium, an international project coordinating research on mummies from various Egyptian sites, while promoting CT based mummy studies and forensic facial reconstructions of ancient Egyptian people. Coffin related research remains a strong interest of his. He is completing his own encyclopedia on Egyptian mummies, to be published in 2021.