School’s mummy revives ancient history interest

By Tim Howard

Bringing to life the face of a 2000-year-old mummifed head stored for more than a century at Grafton High School, has also re-invigorated classical studies at the school.

History teacher Simon Robertson said it was no coincidence that the school has two Year 11 ancient history classes in 2024, just as interest in the mummy ramped up over the past two years.

“I think it (the mummy) defnitely had a lot to do it,” Mr Robertson said.

”The timing of it was when the mummies head podcast came out.

“Some of the kids were involved in the podcast generated a bit of buzz.

“A couple of kids talking about wanting to study archaeology now.”

He said when the ABC program Things the British Stole approached the school about doing a show on the mummy about 18 months ago, events began to take a life of their own.

The show put the school in contact with Dr Janet Davey, a forensic Egyptologist from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and Department of Forensic Medicine, who kept the school updated on her research.

“She was getting herself in contact with a new expert from Monash or from a German university and then the world experts in Herculaneum in Italy,” he said.

“It’s pretty remarkable to think these things that we study in textbooks here in Grafton is actually you know, being connected as we speak.

That’s been super cool.”

He said the mummy was an important of level of uniqueness, the fact that it’s a Greco Roman person and probably descended from the Ptolemies, who were connected to Alexander the Great.

“The fact that she’s artefact, with links to some of the big events in ancient history.

“From what I understand we’re the only school in Australia with something like this,” he said.

“And then it comes with a whole other sort undergone this medical procedure called trepanation in her head, and it’s one of the only mummies in the world, from Egypt where that’s evidenced, so when you talk about uniqueness, it’s pretty amazing.”

The mummy was donated to the school in 1915 and had been buried in the school archives for a long time.

Mr Robertson said when he came to the school about 20 years ago, learning the school owned an ancient Egyptian artefact had stirred his interest.

“Because I was an outsider, I really engaged with it and I was kind of sharing the kids’ indignation that it was here and we began that campaign over the course of a few years to return it,” he said.

“But after that, it kind of sort of sort of disappeared into the upper echelons of the library there in that server room where it’s air conditioned.”

Mr Robertson said the extent of plundering of Egyptian relics over two centuries was the main reason the mummy had not returned home.

“It was the weight of the theft that had gone on in Egypt, particularly in the 1800s and early 1900s,” he said.

“The colonial powers had come in – the British and the French – and just taken everything and every one that they could get their hands on.

“If you go to the British Museum, the Louvre the Met, in New York, they’re just teeming with Egyptian artefacts.

“They said just in terms of the sheer volume of bodies, and artefacts that are out there, they just can’t support the repatriation.

“It’s not something that they don’t want, it’s just that it’s just impossible.”

He said students had also been fascinated with the techniques used to probe the mummy’s secrets and recreate her face.

“Just seeing what else is out there,” he said.

“And, you know, in the big cities that someone is a world expert on mummy tissue, and that’s what they spend their days doing.

“And some other lady has an amazing studio in Victoria where she spends her days you know, forensically sculpting.

“Just exposing the kids in a small town like ours to all the possibilities out there. And that history isn’t just dry and dull and in the past. It’s been it’s been amazing.”

He said the mummy’s links to former Grafton Egyptologist Grafton Elliot Smith, who pioneered the use of X-rays to study mummies and was a leading expert in the feld in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was also important.

“He was an amazing, fellow too, and to think that this might possibly have a connection to him and even bringing that connection that he has to Grafton back out so that people learn more about his achievements, is pretty cool,” Mr Robertson said.