Mummy of a man

Audio Guide# 1052 (in French: omie recouverte de ses "cartonnages")

Ptolemaic era, 300-200 BCE

Egyptian Antiquities

Location: Sully wing, Ground floor, The mummy, Room 15 Vitrine (case) 2 : L'enterrement

Backstory: This mummy is of Neru, an upper middle-class guy from about 250 BC, during the Ptolemaic dynasty ("P-tol-a-maik"), which started with Alexander's general Ptolemy and ended with Cleopatra. By then, mummification wasn't just for royalty any more. Neru's main organs, except his heart, were put in the jars you see. The body was put in salt to dry up, then covered with resin and aromatic oils, then wrapped in cloth. Neru wears a necklace with sister goddesses Nephtys ("Neff-tis") and Isis on it. They represent his experiences of death and rebirth in the afterlife. It also has the 4 sons of another god, Horus, who protect his 4 organs in the jars. Now off goes Neru into the afterlife, a difficult journey with many tasks and some judgments. The jackal-headed guy at his feet is Anubis, the god of mummification and and also the guy who will weigh his heart: if it's heavy, Neru's been bad, so he's thrown to to a croc-hippo-lion combo beast that'll eat him. Otherwise, he parties with the gods.

Dung beetle: See the scarab -- the dung beetle -- near the feet? Egyptians loved it because it endlessly rolls a shitball around, just like their sun god Ra, who endlessly takes the sun up in the morning and brings it down in the evening. Besides, scarabs come in amazing colors and are popular in Egyptian souvenir shops.

This man died when: Pro-animal rights, Buddhist emperor Ashoka ruled India and the Biggest pyramid in the world was constructed in Cholula, Mexico, the Great Wall of China was begun and Archimedes calculated Pi.

Fun facts. Mummies' brains are not used but liquefied and removed. Does that say anything? Also, the croc-hippo-lion's name is "Ammit", almost like the "Dammit!" you'll say as it swallows you. Egyptians were really into their deaths and did a lot of planning for it, kinda like you shopping for your coffin and gravesite when you're 17.

Boring fact. The dude's name could have been Pachery.

Also see: A funerary statue of a King and queen holding their own intestines in a bag! Their other body parts were buried elsewhere. Go to the Richelieu wing, same floor, room 9!

King Charles & his wife, from the 1300s, whose body parts were buried in various places. .

"Extra! Extra!" (optional)

References: Louvre.


This is the mummy of a guy, nobody special, who’s name is either Nenu or Pachery, depending on how you read his name (say whaaaaat?!). He was buried about 250 BCE, around when the Great Wall of China was begun and Archimedes calculated the value of Pi.

What’s a recipe for a mummy? Take one dead body, suck out all the internal organs but the heart via body cavities like the nostril or even the ass, then cover the hollowed out corpse in salts to get all the moisture out, leave for 40-70 days, apply expensive oils and resin, wrap in linen, put more resin and stick even more linen on top, paint sacred symbols on the cloth, add some amulets and voila! It is done. The jars you see below the mummy are it’s internal organs – liver, stomach, lungs and intestines. The heart was left inside the body and the brains were liquefied and thrown out!

This particular man has chosen the goddesses Isis and Nephtys and the four sons of Horus to protect him in the afterlife. Isis is the mother goddess of Egypt, who cares of the poor, the sinners, the downtrodden… the perfect wife and mother, the protector of the dead and children. Her cult later spread throughout the Greco-Roman world and was worshiped from Afghanistan to England.

Some priests developed the myth of Isis – Isis married Osiris, king of Egypt, his brother Seth got jealous, (Seth, by the way, was also the brother of Isis. Incest? Go to the section about the Ptolemaic dynasty to find more about royal incest!) put his brother Osiris into a chest coated in lead and threw him into the Nile. With his brother gone, he became the king of Egypt. Isis, however, searched for her husband far and wide until she recovered the chest, Seth saw it, got very angry and scattered the pieces of Osiris around the world. Isis patiently recovered all the pieces except his penis, she, using her magic, made him alive again and sent him to be the king of the underworld. By the way, nine months after she recovered Osiris, she bore him a son Horus (non-sexual conception, reminds you of anyone,eh?). She hid with her son Horus until he grew up and took the claim to the throne of Egypt.

When ISIS (the terrorist organization) took the goddesses name, the Pagan federation got *really* pissed off and wrote an official letter to the terrorist group. Businesses named “Isis” saw their sales plummet. It is similar to the Nazis stealing the swastika symbol from India.

Another goddess on the mummies body- Nephtys, the sibling of Isis, Seth and Osiris (getting complicated, anyone?)- to make things even weirder-she married Seth… she was always paired with Isis in funerary amulets and depictions. Nephtys symbolizes the death experience, whilst Isis represented the aspect of rebirth. She is much less understood than her sister Isis by us, yet she was just as important in ancient Egyptian religion.

Remember Horus, the king of Egypt born through a non-sexual union of Isis and her mummy, penisless husband Osiris? He had four sons which are depicted on the mummy as well. The sons represented the four jars that you see below the mummy. The jars contained various mummified organs of the mummy-intestines, liver, lungs and stomach.

On the casing around the feet, is depicted a funerary god Anubis. He is the god of mummification and the afterlife and his most famous trademark is his jackal head! Anubis used to be the god of the underworld until he was replaced by Osiris in 2005-1650 BC. Then he became an usher of the souls into the underworld and a “weigher of the hearts” – to enter the afterlife, your heart was weighed and if you were bad you couldn’t enter and were eaten by female demon Ammit – a joint animal of crocodile, lion and hippopotamus.He also protected tombs Do you know why did Anubis have a black jackal head? Bodies turned black after embalming!

Funerary scarab – if you visit Egypt today, shopkeepers will gift you many scarabs as a souvenir. Scarabs were popular amulets which represented the sun god Ra. Want to know the weird part? Scarab is a fancy name for a dung beetle! And just as the sun god Ra rolls the Sun to bring light, the Scarab rolls his dung ball! Later, eggs would be laid into the shit ball and little dunglets would hatch. The dung beetle is the symbol of the heavenly cycle and regeneration (rebirth). Scarabs were usually not used in funerals, but sometimes, like in this case, they were supposed to be “heart scarabs” and tell the heart to stay strong and not give evidence against the dead person when they were being judged by the gods in the underworld.

Mummification – in the beginning of the Egyptian kingdom mummification was reserved only for the richest (unless you happened to be accidentally mummified cause of the dryness of the Sahara desert). Later on, mummification became more available to everyone, the amount of mummies increased although the overall quality of the embalming decreased.

Ptolemaic period:Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) conquered lands from Greece to India (including Egypt) and crowned himself the King of Asia. He turned back in India, not because the curry was too spicy, but because his troops got exhausted and homesick and were deathly afraid of the Indian war elephants.

He spread greek culture across the conquered lands and an interesting mix of Hellenistic (Greek) and local cultures appeared. The city of Alexandria in Egypt is named after him. After the death of Alexander the Great his general Ptolemy I was named the pharaoh of Egypt and hence the Ptolemaic dynasty was started. Greeks, who weren’t native to the land had to gain the acceptance of the local population – so they named themselves pharaohs, practiced Egyptian religion, were shown wearing Egyptian clothing and got into an Egyptian tradition for the pharaohs to marry their own siblings (so that the blood stays pure). However, a lot of Greeks moved to Egypt and lived under Greek law as a privileged minority, though intermarriages were common and a new Greco-egyptian educated class appeared. Uprisings were frequent. The most famous of the Ptolemys is Cleopatra – the lover of Caesar. The Ptolemys ruled Egypt for almost 300 years – from 305 BCE to 30 BCE. Cleopatra was the last ruler of Egypt. Egypt was ruled by the Romans after Cleopatra.

This particular mummy was buried between III – II century BCE. The middle of the Ptolemaic rule. In 221 BCE began the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty, because Egyptian nationalism peaked and family conflicts over power became more and more frequent. Egyptian culture got more and more Hellenized.