By An ancient Egyptian mummy, dubbed the “Screaming Woman” for what appears to be an open-mouthed look of pain or fear, might have had that expression fixed in place by a rare muscle reaction when she died.
Sudden muscular stiffening associated with violent deaths under extreme physical and emotional stress, known as cadaveric spasm, could explain this roughly 3,500-year-old mummy’s silent scream, researchers report August 2 in Frontiers in Medicine.
The Screaming Woman’s cause of death remains undetermined, so a cadaveric spasm cannot be confirmed as the reason for her alarming look. But new evidence of the care and cost involved in preparing this woman’s mummified body indicates that embalmers did not simply neglect to close her mouth, say radiologist Sahar Saleem of Cairo University and anthropologist Samia El-Merghani, conservator of mummies at Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Cairo.
