Already already fascinating and mysterious, mummies become even more so when they are… covered in gold. This is the case with the one just loaned from the Boulogne-sur-Mer museum in Pas-de-Calais for a period of five years, reports BFM TV.
Since 1er February, and until April 30, visitors can therefore admire the golden mummy of Antinoé, property of the Museum of Fine Arts in Dunkirk (North), which separates from it, for the first time, for renovation works . The body, parched and embalmed, is called “Ounnout”. Discovered in 1906 on the Egyptian archaeological site of the Antinoé Roman era, she is described as a prophetess by the man behind the find, the archaeologist Albert Gayet.
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A woman aged 20 to 30
According to the site Actu.fr, research was carried out, in particular by the Louvre, between 2005 and 2010. They made it possible to learn more about the enigmatic golden mummy. It is first believed to date from IVe century AD, but according to the Dunkirk museum site, a carbon 14 dating allows to reevaluate its birth between 196 and 256 AD It also owes its shiny appearance to a vegetable resin with which it is coated, characteristic of mummification rites. Above are more than 500 gold leaves which have taken part in its remarkable conservation. Radiological examinations, for their part, revealed that the embalmed body was indeed that of a woman, aged 20 to 30 years, but whose causes of death could not be identified.
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