Classical Department displays 2,700-year-old mummy

Few students are aware that a 2,700-year-old Egyptian mummy has been the University of Richmond’s property for 133 years.

The mummy, Tchai-Ameni-Newit, and her sarcophagus are on public display in the Classical Studies Department’s Stuart L. Wheeler Gallery of the Ancient World in North Court Academic Building. The dimly lit room, silent except for the hum of the ventilation system, is home to a number of other Greek and Roman antiquities and modern replicas.

Of the items in the gallery, the mummy is most prominent. She lies in a glass-sided drawer that pulls out from the left wall, and her sarcophagus stands in a large glass case directly above her.

According to the Classical Studies Department’s Web site, the university acquired Tchai-Ameni-Newit in 1876, when Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a professor and trustee of Richmond College, brought her back from an excursion to Egypt. Curry bought the mummy in Egypt from an American who said it had once belonged to the Prince of Wales.

This part of the history has raised some skepticism over whether the mummy actually belongs to the sarcophagus, said Elizabeth Baughan, assistant professor of classics and archaeology at Richmond.

The description of the American who sold the mummy to Curry resembles Edwin Smith, Baughan said. Smith was part of a team that supposedly excavated 30 mummies one day in 1875 and presented them to the Prince of Wales, she said.

“The question is, how likely it is that 30 mummies were excavated at one time and in one day?” Baugh said.

“Was it kind of a set up to please the Prince of Wales when he visited and, if so, were they mixing mummies with sarcophagi that were more intact?”