Archaeology Update

Archaeology Magazine is always an interesting read. This month's issue features two stories that may be of particular interest to Pagans and Witches who have an interest in ancient ways.

In A Mummy's Life, Eti Bonn-Muller reports on the journey to get to know an Egyptian priestess.

Around 800 B.C., a wealthy Egyptian priestess named Meresamun served the god Amun in the monumental Temple of Karnak at Thebes. Her primary duties were to play percussion, string, and wind instruments that pleased and soothed him, and to sing hymns that praised his name. When she died, her body was mummified and sealed in a skintight coffin of cartonnage (layers of linen and plaster), which had been lavishly painted with her idealized likeness and images to ensure a successful journey to the afterlife.

The fragile coffin was never opened and the body never unwrapped because generations of curious curators couldn't bring themselves to destroy the beautiful decorations. But recent analysis on a state-of-the-art Philips 256-slice iCT scanner is now allowing experts to examine Meresamun as never before. The results of the study, along with ground-breaking research on the role of priestess-musicians in the temple and at home, are the subjects of the museum's current exhibition, The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt.

In Grave of the Middle East's Oldest Witch, Mati Milstein reports on what some believe is the burial site of a pre-Neolithic female shaman.