© 2015 The Field Museum photo by John Weinstein

This mummy is known as the Gilded Lady, and is part of the Field Museum’s collection. However, it hasn’t been on display since the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, until now! She is on display as part of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s new exhibit Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs. You can see her headdress which isn’t made from the linen of the rest of her mummy but instead glued layers of papyrus (this type of design is called cartonage) to mimic her hair. Her gilded face mask has made her famous and might be a sign of divinity or hope of divinity.

She is a Roman-era Egyptian mummy and by using CT scans it is believed she is a 40-year-old woman with curly hair. They forensically reconstructed her face hyper-realistically to show what she may have looked like.

If You Go:

The exhibit at Denver Museum of Nature & Science runs through February 4th and requires an extra ticket on top of normal admission.

Museum Monday is an every other week series about museum news, objects, and reviews.

Related posts:

Museum Monday: Journey to the Silk Road Museum Monday: Mermaids or Manatees? Museum Monday: Secrets from the Tombs at DMNS Revealing the Mummy’s Secrets Museum Monday: Unicorns at Denver Museum of Nature & Science