“Butch” is a girl.
Recent tests show that Naperville Central High School’s resident mummy, long thought to be a young male, is an Egyptian female who may have lived under the reign of the legendary queen Cleopatra.
“My jaw dropped literally when I found out,” said Jim Galanis, a Naperville Central teacher of ancient history who has spent the last 15 years as one of the mummy’s two caretakers.
Radiocarbon and DNA test results released late last month by Geochron Labs of Boston indicate that the mummy is female and about 2,020 years old, with a plus or minus range of 40 years.
Another clue helped narrow the range. The style of the mummy’s death mask predates a Roman invasion of Egypt in 30 B.C. That suggested that the mummy may have lived during Cleopatra’s reign, which lasted from 51 to 30 B.C.
Butch will be featured this fall in an episode of “The Mummy Road Show” on the National Geographic Channel. The series’ producers paid for tests and filmed an examination of the mummy in February at Naperville Central.
A tooth was extracted for testing, and the mummy was sent to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute for preservation treatment.
“I miss having her around,” Galanis said. “There’s an empty case I walk by on a daily basis. But I know she’s in good hands.”
The mummy was donated to the school in 1940 and rediscovered in a storeroom in 1975. Results from a 1994 radiology exam indicated that the mummy could have been an 8-year-old boy who died between 332 and 30 B.C.
Galanis and caretaker Tom Henneberry, also a teacher of ancient history at Naperville Central, now use the mummy in programs for 6th graders as well as in high school history units.
Butch is expected to return to a climate-controlled, mahogany-and-glass case this summer. She’ll also be renamed. Galanis said a school librarian is taking suggestions and a contest will be held.
“When I first saw her [15 years ago], she was in pretty bad shape,” Galanis said. “We’re going to put her back in the case fully preserved.”