Takabuti’s Health: Proteomics - Professor Anthony Freemont
Channel: Takabuti Seminar
Date: 11/05/2021

The mummy of Takabuti is one of the best-known antiquities in the Ulster Museum, Belfast. Takabuti was a young woman who lived in Egypt during a tumultuous period, around 600 BC. Her mummy was unwrapped and investigated in Belfast in 1835. The results of the Takabuti Project (2007-2009 and 2018-2020) have culminated in the publication of a new book – The Life and Times of Takabuti in Ancient Egypt: Investigating the Belfast Mummy (available from Liverpool University Press - https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/54509/)
The project has demonstrated how researchers act as ‘forensic detectives’ piecing together a picture of the life and times of Takabuti. Questions addressed include – Who was Takabuti? When did she live? Where did she come from and where did she reside? What did she eat, and did she suffer from any diseases? Did she suffer a violent death, and how was she mummified and prepared for burial?
This video was part of a one-day online seminar to launch the book and bring the project to the public.

Professor Anthony Freemont is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at The University of Manchester. Until retirement at the end of March 2021 he was Procter Professor of Pathology, a post he had held for 27 years. He is a researcher within the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and teacher on the online MSc in Biomedical Egyptology. His major research interest is in the application of molecular pathology techniques to human tissue and body fluids to better understand the nature of disease. Working with colleagues he is now applying these techniques to mummified tissues to identify relationships between individuals and the patterns of disease in ancient Egypt.