NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—Melinda Nelson-Hurst has been investigating Egyptian artifacts that have been housed at Tulane University since 1852, when they were donated by an associate of collector George Gliddon. It was not known if the two ancient coffins and two items identified as funerary masks belonged to the two mummies in the school’s collection. Nelson-Hurst has been able to determine that one of the coffins does belong to the male mummy, a man named Djed-Thoth-iu-ef-ankh, who was a priest and overseer of craftsmen at the temple of Amun in Thebes. “I’m amazed at the amount of detail I’ve been able to find out about this man,” she announced. The second mummy, of a teenaged girl, has yielded less information. But Nelson-Hurst’s research identified the second coffin as belonging to a woman named Djed-Mut-iu-es-ankh. Her mummy was unwrapped and dissected by Gliddon in Philadelphia, and her skull is now part of the collection at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum. It turns out that the two supposed funerary masks are in fact part of the innermost mummy cases belonging to Djed-Thoth-iu-ef-ankh, and Djed-Mut-iu-es-ankh.
