The Oldest Tattoos
Just how early ancient peoples were inking their bodies has been changed to an earlier date than originally believed after 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies were discovered to have tattoos on their skin
The tattoos were found on male and female 'Gebelein' mummies. The mummies date back 5,000 years, and were discovered over a 100 years ago. Gebelein is an area near Luxor, in the southern part of Upper Eygpt.
Gebelein Man was a young man, no more than 21 years of age when he died violently from a stab wound to his back. Smudges on his arm turned out to be tattoos of two overlapping horned animals known as Barbary sheep, which were well known in Predynastic Egyptian art. The tattoos were made with some type of needle made from bone or copper using soot.
The design of the tattoos were a display of virility and strength, since in the ancient world goats and bulls were associated with male power.
A female mummy known as Gebelein Woman had s-shaped motifs tattooed on the upper arm and shoulder, markings that are the oldest tattoos ever found on a woman.
A closer look at the mummies came after a cemetery at Hierakopolis in Upper Egypt which dated back to about 2,000 B.C. had three women with extensive tattoos on their abdomen. They could not be seen with the naked eye, only with infrared photography.
These mummies came to their end around the same time as Ötzi the iceman mummy, which was found amidst sheets of melting ice on the Tisenjoch pass of the Similaun glacier in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991. This area stretches between Austria and Italy. This man which lived about 3250 B.C. had 61 geometric tattoos on his body, many of them by known acupuncture points. He was alive during the Copper Age, and was believed to be in his mid-40s when he died after he was shot with an arrow in the back.
Around his body were scattered a bow and quiver with arrows, two birch wood vessels, remnants of a backpack, a leather pouch, fur and leather garments, shoes, a flint dagger and a copper-bladed axe. Eventually it would be found that over 400 artifacts were scattered around the site.
These belongings suggest he might have been a leader, not only because of the weapons but in the quality of his well-preserved garments.
Examination of his body and DNA have found that he had brown eyes, had relatives in Sardinia and was lactose intolerant. The contents of his stomach revealed he had consumed meat from a red deer and an ibex, and some cereals.
It’s believed Ötzi made the tattoos himself, using a 'hand-poking' technique where a sharp-tipped instrument is used, and then pulverized charcoal was rubbed into the incisions. His tattoos are located near his ribcage, spine, wrist, knee, calves and ankles.
Based on an observation made by historian Count Luigi Cibario (1802-1870) in 1862 when he visited the Piedmont Valley, other bodies of contemporaries of Otzi were discovered when conditions warmed up and revealed their last resting place. It reads thus:
… it happens that the glaciers that stretch between the mountains cover a crowd of sinners, both male and female, to whom the embrace of God is precluded until they have destroyed the huge mass of ice with the needles that they all hold.
The Curse of the Iceman
Call it coincidence or a strange curse since the discovery of Ötzi, many people related to the discovery and research of the mummy have met if not a premature death, an unexpected one.
The first was Rainer Henn head of the team completing forensic examination of the mummy. He picked up the remains with his bare hands to put it in a body bag. In 1992, he was killed in a car accident en-route to a lecture about the discovery of the ice man.
In 1993, Kurt Fritz an experienced mountaineer who guided Henn to the iceman’s body died in an avalanche. He was the only member of the party he was traveling with to die. He had organized tours to the burial site and reaped financial rewards from his Ötzi connection.
A few months later Rainer Hoelzl the only journalist granted access to film the removal of Ötzi from his icy grave, died from a brain tumor at the age of 47. He had just released an hour-long documentary on the discovery.
Helmut Simon was walking with his wife Erika when they discovered a head and should poking out of the ice in 1991. This find would turn out to be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the last century. In 2004, he set out on a hike by himself, and didn’t return. His body was found later, close to where he discovered Ötzi. He had fallen into a crevice after a freak blizzard.
Within hours of Simon’s funeral, Dieter Warnecke, who headed the mountain rescue team sent to locate him, died of a heart attack at the age of 45.
In 2005, Konrad Spindler, 55, the first archeologist to examine the iceman’s corpse made fun of the curse. He said, “It is all a media hype. The next thing you will be saying I will be next.” He soon died from complications related to multiple sclerosis.
In 2002, Dr. Tom Loy a molecular archaeologist, through DNA analysis on Ötzi determined that he had not died alone. He found traces of four different bloods on his clothes indicating he was attacked. That same year his findings were featured in a documentary. In 2005 Loy was about to publish a book about his work, when he died in his Brisbane home when he was 63 years old.
Present day Otzi is displayed in a refrigerated room at the South Tyrol Archaeological museum in Bolzano, Italy where he brings in millions of dollars in tourism.