The research team carefully examined 200 color portraits of mummies for signs of neurological disease. The mummies were housed in the British Museum, London, and the Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York.

The portraits had been painted at the beginning of the first millennium and were part of Egyptian funerary practice. They were painted specifically to cover the head of the mummy with a likeness of the dead person. They are recognized to be of great artistic and technical merit.

The researchers also took detailed measurements of 32 skulls to look for ridges left by brain tissue and the size and shape of eye sockets. The skulls had been excavated at Hawara in Northern Egypt, where most of the portraits were found. Three-dimensional images were taken of one of the skulls.

The researchers were able to deduce that two of the mummies had Parry-Romberg syndrome -- a progressive one-sided atrophy of the facial tissues and underlying bone, a feature of which is epilepsy and migraine. Three had eyes pointing inwards, or tropia, and one had oval pupils, a condition known as corectopia.

All of these are normally associated with abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system.

(Reference: Neurology in ancient faces, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 2001;70:524-9.)

Related website:

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry

[Contact: Emma Wilkinson]

16-Mar-2001