TURIN, ITALY—Live Science reports that an international team of researchers has used computed tomography scanning to reconstruct the face of Nebiri, an Egyptian dignitary who lived during the reign of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose III (r. 1479‒1425 B.C.) and was buried in the Valley of the Queens. His tomb was plundered in antiquity, and his body destroyed, but Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli recovered his head and canopic jars containing his internal organs in the early twentieth century. The remains are now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Turin. Chemical analysis indicated that Nebiri’s head and brain were carefully packed with linen bandages treated with a mixture of animal fat or plant oil, an aromatic plant, a coniferous resin, and heated Pistacia resin, or mastic. “We were able to add strength to the argument that Nebiri was [a] high elite,” Robert Loynes of the University of Manchester said of the meticulous packing job, which protected the remains from insects and maintained the head’s lifelike appearance. For more, go to “Egypt’s Final Redoubt in Canaan.”
