Fingerprints identification on 3000 year old Egyptian mummies

Abstract

The Djehuty Project (Dra Abu el-Naga; Luxor, Egypt) contains a reused burial chamber, UE165. The human remains include 6 disarticulated, mummified human digits, of which five have very well-conserved prints. The most plau- sible dating is the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945–715 BCE). High resolution photographs were taken of these and studied in order to identify the main pattern, delta types and minutiae, ridge density and ridge breadth. First, however, a contempo- rary mummified body was studied in order to calculate the percentage of contraction that can occur in mummified digit tissue. The remains consisted of 4 fingers (a thumb, two index fingers and a middle finger) and a hallux toe, all from the right side, indicating that they came from at least two different people. As regards sex, all the fingers presented values typi- cal of females. Estimated age ranged from 10.62 (middle finger) to 16.25 (thumb) years old, within the sub-adult category. The individual"s height was estimated for all the fingers, obtaining values between 135.87 cm for the middle finger and 162.60 cm for the thumb. With regard to the possible ancestral origins of the remains, the type of delta o triradius identified presents high frequencies in contemporary Nigerian and Romanian populations. These results demonstrate that it is possi- ble to work with fingerprints as much as 3,000 years old. It has been possible to identify the main patterns and the minutiae with a precision that exceeds the numeric standard —2 minutiae— currently applied in many countries for forensic identification.