Today, the Zagreb Mummy and the Linen Book of Zagreb are among the best-known objects associated with the Egyptian collection of Zagreb's Archaeological Museum. Scientific examination indicates that the mummy is the body of a woman who died between the ages of approximately 30 and 40.
The story of how an Egyptian mummy wrapped in an Etruscan manuscript ended up in Zagreb is almost as remarkable as the object itself. Some details are well documented, while one central mystery remains unresolved: researchers still do not know exactly how an Egyptian woman came to be wrapped in linen carrying an Etruscan religious text.
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Liber Linteus Zagrebiensis: the Linen Book of Zagreb
The Liber Linteus Zagrebiensis, or Linen Book of Zagreb, is the longest surviving manuscript written in the Etruscan language. The preserved text contains around 1,130 words arranged in 12 columns. When opened out, the linen is about 340 cm long, while the surviving material was later cut into five strips that were used to wrap the mummy.
The writing is mainly in black ink, with red lines marking sections of the text. Researchers believe the manuscript was probably a religious or liturgical text, possibly a ritual calendar containing references to Etruscan gods, offerings and dates associated with religious ceremonies.
Its survival is exceptional. The Zagreb Linen Book is not only the longest preserved Etruscan manuscript but also the only surviving Etruscan text with literary characteristics and the only known ancient linen book to have survived substantially intact.
How such a manuscript came to be used to wrap an Egyptian mummy remains uncertain. The Archaeological Museum notes that the mummy dates to around 390 BC and suggests that a small Etruscan community may have lived in Egypt at the time, but this remains a hypothesis rather than a proven explanation.
How the Zagreb Mummy came to Zagreb
The mummy was not part of the famous Franz Koller collection, as is sometimes stated. Croatian collector Mihael Barić bought the mummy and its linen wrappings while travelling in Egypt in 1847 or 1848. He kept them in his private collection in Vienna until his death in 1859 and left them to the National Museum in Zagreb in his will.
The mummy arrived at the National Museum on 5 August 1862 together with its wrappings and several associated objects. These included unused linen bandages, fragments of balm, remains of a funerary wreath, pieces of wood and stucco from a sarcophagus, blue-green beads and the head of a mummified cat.
A badly damaged Egyptian Book of the Dead also arrived with the mummy, although researchers cannot confirm that the papyrus originally belonged to the same burial.
The much larger Egyptian collection associated with Austrian field marshal Franz Koller came to Zagreb separately. Most of Koller's collection was purchased in Prague in 1868 and became the foundation of much of the Archaeological Museum's Egyptian collection.
How researchers discovered the Etruscan text
The importance of the linen wrapping was not immediately understood. In 1869, German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch visited Zagreb to help curator Šime Ljubić examine and organise the museum's growing Egyptian collection. Brugsch recognised that the writing on the linen had alphabetic characteristics, but he could not identify the language.
Ljubić continued cataloguing the mummy and its wrappings, publishing a more detailed description in his 1889 catalogue. By then, the unusual inscription had attracted the attention of scholars outside Croatia.
Viennese Egyptologist Jakob Krall eventually received the linen for detailed study. In 1892, he established that the writing was not Egyptian at all but Etruscan. His discovery transformed what had seemed to be unusual mummy bandages into one of the world's most important surviving sources for the poorly understood Etruscan language.
Krall's identification led to intensive research into both the manuscript and the circumstances in which it reached Egypt. The text itself remains only partly understood because knowledge of the Etruscan language is still incomplete.
Who was the Zagreb Mummy?
Modern examination has answered some questions about the woman herself. X-rays carried out in Zagreb in 1986 showed that the mummy is female and that she probably died between the ages of 30 and 40. Radiocarbon dating places her death at approximately 390 BC.
Her actual identity, however, remains unknown.
The damaged Book of the Dead found among the material that accompanied the mummy names an Egyptian couple: Paher-Khonsu, described as a divine tailor from Thebes, and his wife Nesi-Khonsu. This once encouraged attempts to identify the Zagreb Mummy as Nesi-Khonsu.
Researchers now treat that conclusion cautiously. The Archaeological Museum states that it cannot be confirmed that the papyrus belonged to the Zagreb Mummy at all, and research into the mummy's provenance has found no independent evidence showing that the body is that of Nesi-Khonsu.
So one of the most tempting parts of the mystery remains unresolved: we know approximately when the woman lived and died, but we do not know her name, where exactly in Egypt she was buried or why an Etruscan linen book became part of her funerary wrappings.
The Zagreb Mummy today
The mummy and its linen wrappings underwent further scientific study and conservation during the 20th century. In 1998, conservator Nazzareno Gabrielli of the Vatican Museums carried out an extensive restoration that helped protect the mummy from further deterioration.
The Zagreb Mummy and the Liber Linteus Zagrebiensis remain among the Archaeological Museum's most internationally significant objects, connecting ancient Egypt, Etruscan culture and the history of archaeology in Zagreb in a way found nowhere else.
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