WILL visitors dare step, during tomorrow’s Light Night Liverpool, into the tomb of a mystery mummy who played a vital role in the modern Tutankhamun story?

After all, curses are linked to tombs of long departed Egyptians, but the University of Liverpool’s Gina Criscenzo-Laycock is armed with a healthy pinch of salt.

Making his debut in the university’s Museum of Archaeology is its star attraction, a twentysomething male who lived around the time boy king Tutankhamun ruled.

A new air-controlled final resting place has been created at the museum, thanks to a donation from the Friends of the University.

Visitors will have their first glimpse of the mummified remains when the museum throws open its doors to the public on Friday evening.

The unnamed mummy is finally returning home after being evacuated for safekeeping during the German World War Two blitz on Liverpool in 1941, an absence of 74 years.

 

Gina Criscenzo-Laycock, curator of the museum, said when the mummy makes his public debut, superstitious visitors need have no worries.

" Nothing has happened to me yet!" she said.  "Curses were designed to keep away people who wanted to do harm to the body, and we want to help, so I don’t think we have anything to be afraid of.”

It was more than 100 years ago when the then head of archaeology at Liverpool, Professor John Garstang, returned to Britain from an expedition to North Africa. With him on the journey home was the mummy whose remains were contained in a coffin belonging to a Roman woman.   His travel companion remains a mystery to this day.

The remains of the male played a vital role in the scientific exploration in the 1960s of the world’s most famous mummy, Tutankhamun

We’re not treating him like a curiosity; he was a person and we feel we have a duty to do whatever we can to fulfil his beliefs

Methods pioneered by anatomists at the University of Liverpool on their unnamed mummy, known as the Garstang Mummy, were used to carry out the first x-rays on boy king Tutankhamun in 1968.

Many of the methods developed by University anatomists, Professor Ronald Harrison - who carried out the first x-ray on the boy king in 1968 - and Dr Robert Connolly were pioneered using the Garstang Mummy.

Gina explained: “The mummy’s name is not known, nor is it clear where in Egypt he lived.   All our team know about the man is that he lived around 3,500 years ago during the 18th dynasty – like Tutankhamun - and died in his mid to late twenties, although it is not clear what he died of.

"Examination of his teeth, which are in very good condition, suggests he was likely to have held a relatively high status. Often the teeth of the poor in Egyptian society were very worn.

 “In a sense he is coming home to us. Various parts of the collection were sent out and most have come back to us. He is the last to return.”

She added: “It’s important to remember that we are dealing with human remains, so we have got to be sympathetic to his beliefs. The survival of the body was very important to ancient Egyptians, as was the provision of food and drink to last the soul for eternity.

“The new case is the perfect place for preservation of his body, and he will also be in a room full of Egyptian funerary goods, which were all designed to help someone get to the afterlife and exist there comfortably. He will probably be surrounded by a larger selection of goods than he was originally buried with.

“We’re not treating him like a curiosity; he was a person and we feel we have a duty to do whatever we can to fulfil his beliefs.”

* The Garstang Mummy will be unveiled in his new home at 14 Abercromby Square as part of Liverpool’s Light Night, between 4pm and 9pm on May 15.