Nesyamun

53°48′04″N 1°32′53″W / 53.801°N 1.548°W / 53.801; -1.548

Nesyamun
God's father of Montu Scribe of the temple of Montu Scribe who lays out offerings Scribe who keeps tally of the cattle
An artist's rendering of how the coffin lid of Nesyamun might have originally looked. The effect is intended to recall the illustrations made by Napoleon's surveyors in the Description of Egypt.
Dynasty	20th Dynasty
Pharaoh	Ramesses XI
Burial	Likely Deir el-Bahari

Nesyamun[1] in hieroglyphs

Nesyamun, also known as Natsef-Amun or The Leeds Mummy, was an ancient Egyptian priest who lived during the Twentieth Dynasty c. 1100 BC. He was a senior member of the temple administration in the Karnak temple complex and held various titles including "god's father of Montu" and "scribe of Montu", and was responsible for presenting the daily food offerings to the gods and tallying the cattle of the Karnak temple estates. Nothing is known about his family.

His body was discovered in the early 1820s during excavations of the Deir el-Bahari causeway by Giuseppe Passalacqua [fr]. He was shipped to Europe and sold several times before being purchased for the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society's museum in Leeds, England. In 1824 his coffin and mummy was the subject of one of the earliest scientific investigations of an Egyptian mummy. His remains are now held in the collection of the Leeds City Museum. Study of his coffin and mummy cover found them to be of high quality. Nesyamun was the only one of the museum's mummies to remain intact following the 1941 Leeds Blitz, although his mummy cover sustained major damage. From the 1930s onward he has undergone various forms of testing which has revealed his general state of health and that he died aged between 50 and 60 years. In 2020, his mummified vocal tract was modelled using CT scan data, allowing it to produce a single sound; the study attracted criticism for its ethics and research value.