The Hapi-Men Mummy
During a 1902 excavation at Abydos, Sir Flinders Petrie excavated the tomb of a man identified by the inscription on his stone sarcophagus as “…the third priest of Mut… the Priest of Horus, the Osiris Hapi-Men… .” The Hapi-Men, as the mummified remains of the priest from ca. 3rd century BCE are now called, was actually entombed with the mummified remains of his pet dog . Back in the 1980, the Hapi-Men mummy underwent an x-ray. Again in April of 2009, researchers at the museum took the Hapi-Men and the Hapi-puppy to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to undergo a CT-scan.
The CT-scan, a non-invasive procedure, took images of the two mummies at increments of one millimeter. When the composite image was put together, a three-dimensional view of the mummies could be seen. It was determined that the Hapi-Men must have been somewhere around forty years of age at the time of his death. Objects that turned up n the CT-scan in the Hapi-Men’s chest suggest that he was mummified with “apotropaic” or protective amulets in his chest.
The CT-scan of the Hapi-puppy proved that the puppy was indeed a puppy.
His mummified pet was shown to indeed be a dog, not a common animal to be mummified in Egypt 2,3000 years ago. A 2010 Archaeology article highlights some other dogs who faithfully followed their masters into the afterlife. The young age of the puppy suggests that it was killed at the time of the Hapi-Men’s death in order for the two to remain united in the afterlife. Taking the Hapi-men and his Hapi-puppy to the hospital was a delicate task, and you can watch the video of the careful, but exciting, transportation here:
This slideshow also gives an inside look at the Hapi-Men’s CT-scan:
Researchers hope that the information from the scans can eventually be incorporated into the Egyptian galleries. Online, researchers can visit the Open Research Scan Archive and request the Ct-scan images of the Hapi-Men. If you are interested in reading more about the process of Egyptian mummification, you can read Dr. S.J. Fleming’s The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science. Today, you can visit the Hapi-Men and his Hapi-Puppy in the museum’s Upper Egyptian galleries.