Takabuti: In Life and How She Died - Dr Robert Loynes
Channel: Takabuti Seminar
Date: 2021-05-11

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.

Dr Robert Loynes obtained a PhD in Egyptology from The University of Manchester in 2014, after retiring from a career as an orthopaedic surgeon when he was awarded an MBE. Since then he has been involved in continuous research programmes using medical imaging and, in particular, CT scans to analyse mummification techniques and reveal pathology within ancient Egyptian mummies from sources including Egypt, Moscow, Italy, the USA and the UK. Following publication of his thesis he has written chapters for several books and numerous articles on mummification in peer-reviewed journals. A regular speaker on the subject of mummification at international conferences, he also speaks to Egyptology societies in the UK and abroad and is in the process of compiling a metadata base of mummy CT scans to enable a more robust discourse on mummification techniques throughout the eras of Egyptian history.