The Face of Takabuti - Professor Caroline Wilkinson and Dr Sarah Shrimpton
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 Sarah Shrimpton is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in Face Lab at the School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. She has a background in fine art and, after graduating with an MSc in Forensic Art from the University of Dundee, she undertook a number of research positions that enabled her to focus on the recognition of altered facial images. This culminated in a PhD investigating the role of facial features in identity processing of composited faces. With a focus on recognition of faces and facial depictions for forensic scenarios, her research centres around exploring various methods for the creation of facial depictions and synthetic faces, through compositing, and how they are received, perceived and recognised by the public. She has carried out facial depiction work for forensic investigations both in the UK and internationally, and contributes to archaeological depiction work exhibited around the world.

Professor Caroline Wilkinson is the Director of Liverpool School of Art and Design, where she leads Face Lab, a research group at Liverpool John Moores University. She has a background in art and science and, after receiving her PhD from The University of Manchester, she led the Unit of Art in Medicine and received a NESTA Fellowship to develop a 3D computerised facial reconstruction system for use in forensic and archaeological depiction. She moved to Liverpool John Moores University from the University of Dundee, where she was Head of Human Identification in the award-winning Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification and her high-profile facial depiction work includes facial depictions of Richard III, J. S. Bach and Robert the Bruce. She is certified by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) as a Forensic Anthropologist Level I (craniofacial specialism) and is an experienced practitioner with facial depiction work exhibited in museums around the world.