An ancient Egyptian woman whose face has been locked in a chilling scream-like pose for 3,500 years didn’t end up that way because of sloppy embalming, new research has revealed. Instead, the authors of a new study suspect that the mummy’s tortured expression may reflect the grimace that overcame her face as she died, wailing in anguish.

Originally discovered back in 1935, the so-called Mummy of the Screaming Woman was found beneath a tomb intended for a royal architect named Senmut in Deir Elbahari near Luxor. Thought to have been interred in the 15th century BCE, the anonymous corpse is adorned with a black wig and is defined by her wide, gaping mouth, producing a truly horrifying countenance.

According to the study authors, mummies with open mouths are extremely rare, since Egyptian embalmers “frequently wrapped the mandible around the skull” in order to keep corpses’ gobs firmly shut. Of the two other known mummies with screaming expressions, one is thought to have been deliberately denied proper postmortem treatment after being executed for plotting to assassinate Ramesses III, while the other has been interpreted as a result of rigor mortis.

For this reason, scholars have generally attributed the Screaming Woman’s wide-jawed appearance to sub-standard mummification practices – a theory that is supported by the fact that her brain, heart, liver, and other organs had not been removed. However, after examining the body using an array of imaging and chemical analysis techniques, the authors of the new study find that this simply isn’t the case.

For instance, using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), the researchers discovered that the mummy had been embalmed with expensive foreign materials including juniper and frankincense, which would have been imported from far-flung places in the Mediterranean, East Africa, or Southern Arabia. "Here we show that she was embalmed with costly, imported embalming material,” explained study author Dr Sahar Saleem in a statement. 

“This, and the mummy's well-preserved appearance, contradicts the traditional belief that a failure to remove her inner organs implied poor mummification,” Saleem adds.

Further analysis of the body revealed that the woman stood 1.54 meters tall (about 5 feet) and died at the age of 48. Her identity remains a mystery, although the fact that she was buried with her hands on her groin indicates that she was not of royal blood.

Further examination indicated that the Screaming Woman suffered from mild arthritis of the spine and had lost several teeth at some point prior to her death, possibly at the hands of an ancient dental practitioner. “Teeth lost during life may have been extracted,” said Saleem. “Dentistry had originated in ancient Egypt, with Hesy Re the first recorded physician and dentist in the world.”

In an attempt to restore a more youthful appearance, the woman’s hair was dyed with henna and juniper, while her wig – which was made of date palm fibers – had been treated with quartz, magnetite, and albite crystals, giving it a black sheen. 

As for her nightmarish expression, the researchers hypothesize that the woman’s mouth may have been locked open when she died thanks to a “cadaveric spasm”, which typically occurs when a person experiences a traumatic or violent death. In such cases, the muscles of the jaw seize up, freezing the departing individual’s mortal scream upon their face. 

“The mummy's screaming facial expression in this study could be read as a cadaveric spasm, implying that the woman died screaming from agony or pain,” says Saleem. 

However, because no cause of death was identified, the researchers conclude that “the true history or circumstances of the death of the woman […] are unknown, hence the cause of her screaming facial appearance cannot be established with certainty.”

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.