TESTING MERIT’S CROWNING GLORY
- Graham Walker
- Aug 21
- 8 min read
With this month’s reshowing of our BBC series ‘Life & Death in the Valley of the Kings’ starring the C.14th BC couple Kha and Merit, a particular highlight of episode 2 was surely Merit’s fabulous wig (34 minutes into: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=638244926338234), the object which first led us to these two very special Egyptians way back in 1986 almost 40 years ago(!).
Having begun researching Egyptian hair during my undergraduate studies at University College London, it brought together my lifelong passion for Egypt with my family’s long connections with the hairdressing trade. And I vividly remember being shown the black and white image of this striking object in the huge folio-sized excavation report (below), published in 1927 by Italian archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli (relative of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli discussed at Rediscovering Amy’s Egyptian Gold among the Pyramids and Kings).
In fact so intrigued by its superb preservation and surprisingly modern-looking appearance I realised that this was a subject I really wanted to study in more depth, during the PhD that followed visiting Turin’s Museo Egizio to inspect it for myself in 1994. Then came several more visits to the museum with Dr. Stephen Buckley, all part of our long-term research into the museum’s human and animal mummies resulting in contributions to academic papers ranging from the identification of Egypt’s earliest mummified body (A prehistoric Egyptian mummy: Evidence for an ‘embalming recipe’ and the evolution of early formative funerary treatments - ScienceDirect) to what remained of the great Ramesside queen Nefertari (Queen Nefertari, the Royal Spouse of Pharaoh Ramses II: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Mummified Remains Found in Her Tomb (QV66) | PLOS One), plus of course our analysis of the Kha and Merit collection.
With over 500 objects discovered in 1906 in their intact burial chamber at Deir el-Medina, we were given access to this chamber via a series of long ladders (above left) as part of our aforementioned series, in the company of Turin Museum’s then director, the wonderful Dr. Eleni Vassilika (above right) and not a few resident bats. We were also allowed into the couple’s nearby tomb chapel (below) which we’ve also revisited as part of our annual ‘Immortal Egypt’ tour for The Cultural Experience Ancient Egypt and where offerings would have been brought to sustain the couple’s souls after death.
Beneath the chapel’s superbly decorated ceiling, carefully painted wall scenes show Kha and Merit with their children, enjoying a banquet while entertained by musicians. Their belongings are similarly portrayed on the chapel’s walls, the same objects having been placed in the burial chamber beside the nested coffins containing their carefully mummified bodies.
Having never been unwrapped, X-rays carried out in 1966 and now more recent CT scans have revealed both Kha and Merit still wear lavish jewellery. In Merit’s case a broad collar necklace, finger rings and jewelled belt are accompanied by two pairs of large gold earrings, indicating each ear had been pierced twice in a fashion restricted to the second half of the 18th dynasty, between c.1400-1335 BC, as we also noticed in the case of Tutankhamun’s great-grandmother Tuya and the woman we identified as Nefertiti back in 2004 (below).
Our research also reveals that Merit, like her husband Kha, had been mummified using a natron salt solution which had preserved her brain and internal organs in situ, solving the longstanding mystery surrounding the absence of canopic jars in their tomb Shedding New Light on the 18th Dynasty Mummies of the Royal Architect Kha and His Spouse Merit | PLOS One. And with further surprising details about the substances used in the couple’s mummification, our chemical analysis has clearly shown that despite claims to the contrary, Merit’s embalming had been far more costly than that of her husband Kha. From her gilded mask which he didn’t have to the fact that only her wrappings had been coated in a blend of imported Pistacia resin mixed with oil from the red-hued tilapia fish, this had been complemented by her red-dyed linen shroud, as provided for other elite women, presumably linking them to the reviving powers of the ‘Ladies of Red Linen’, goddesses Hathor and Sekhmet.
And no less intriguing were Merit’s personal possessions: two baskets containing between them a large, carefully folded sheet of fringed linen stained with oil which Schiaparelli described as ‘Merit’s bathrobe’; lengths of plaited hair; seven hairpins, four of bronze and three bone (see also: https://www.immortalegypt.co.uk/post/hidden-histories-of-the-hair-pin-starring-cleopatra-the-wearers-of-black); two bronze razors; and three wooden combs.
As key items of hairdressing equipment employed throughout pharaonic history, ornate combs were sometimes worn in the hair as a form of adornment, but mainly used to keep the hair free of tangles and indeed free of head lice and their eggs, most easily removed with the fine teeth of such combs and often recovered between their teeth. A fourth comb was also found inside Merit’s well-stocked cosmetic chest alongside a tube of kohl eyepaint and pots of perfumed oil, the spaces between its broken teeth still retaining a dark residue (below).
As for her iconic wig, Schiaparelli had found this inside its tall shrine-shaped box, made of acacia wood sacred to Hathor and inscribed with Meryt’s name (below). At the bottom of the box he also discovered “pieces of plaits and clumps of hair”, which with no visible means of anchoring to either the wig or natural hair suggests they were either unfinished braids or hair extensions, or maybe even Merit’s natural hair, collected in life and retained for her burial, as seems to have been regular practice.
Yet the box’s main purpose was to house Merit’s splendid wig, its 110cm tall height allowing it to hang completely freely within when placed over the two parallel supports of its internal mount (above right). And such conditions had certainly proved beneficial.
As the most impressive woman’s wig to have survived from pharaonic times, it recreates the long full ‘enveloping’ style exactly as shown in wall scenes and sculpture of the time, made entirely of dark brown human hair which at the time of its discovery in 1906 “still shines with the perfumed oils that were applied to it” according to Schiaparelli.
Clearly made by a very skilled wigmaker, no doubt using the same kind of wooden head-shaped wig mount occasionally found with added facial features (below left), these are not dissimilar to those polystyrene heads in the windows of old-fashioned hairdressers. And with the same technique still employed by modern wigmakers like our expert colleague Filippo Salamone with whom we work as part of our ‘Ancient Adornments Project’ (eg. https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue42/6/3.cfm), such a mount would also have been used to create Merit’s foundation base from thin plaits of human hair.
Merit’s wigmaker had then used a further long thin plait to form a central ‘parting’ on to which individual lengths of hair had then been attached at right angles by means of slip knots. With these separate lengths averaging around 54cm long, it’s likely they were plaited when wet and untied once dry to achieve the wig’s ‘crimped’ effect, the ends of each section then tightly twisted to secure them. A further braid, made up of three thicker plaits, had also been attached at the crown to hang down at the back of the head, a feature which we believe linked the wearer to goddess Hathor as ‘Lady of the Locks’, as found in wall scenes and making up the very hieroglyphic symbol for ‘hair’ (below).
Yet as we also knew from our examination of Merit’s wig, the quantity and arrangement of the hair used in its construction wouldn’t have completely concealed Merit’s head when worn. So to find out more about her grooming regime and what remained of her natural hair as once worn beneath this wig and now permanently beneath her still intact wrappings, we used GC/MS chemical analysis which requires the most minute samples of less than 0.1mg so pretty much the size of this full stop.
And this revealed that the shining oil Schiaparelli had noted on her wig back in 1906 - but long since dried up - had been a plant oil mixed with a small amount of fragrant balsam. So clearly quite different from the beeswax and resin hair ‘fixative’ used to set the styles of other ancient wigs we’ve studied, Merit’s oil-based hair product seems to have served a different purpose, a perfumed moisturising treatment intended to keep her wig in good condition which it clearly has done for several millennia in an endorsement modern manufacturers can only dream about!
Then to find out how this might relate to Merit’s hairdressing equipment, a minute sample of the aforementioned debris between the teeth of the wooden comb in her cosmetic chest revealed this was a blend of plant oil, plant gum, ‘balsam’ and beeswax – but with the addition of cholesterol.
As the main compound found on the human scalp and skin, the cholesterol strongly suggests that Merit had used the comb on her natural hair. So unlike other elite women of her time, including the aforementioned body we believe to be Nefertiti (above), Merit had not shaved her head completely and retained at least some of her own hair. This is also supported by the style of her wig, purposefully designed to be worn over some amount of natural hair, albeit kept fairly short presumably by means of Merit’s bronze razors, the means of trimming hair prior to the introduction of shears or scissors. She may even have combed her own short hair flat, smoothing it down with an application of that plant oil, gum, balsam and beeswax mixture we’d found between the comb’s teeth, in a practice found in art from exactly this same time in which the natural hair just peeps out from the front of the wig (below).
And as our programmes about Merit and husband Kha continue to reach audiences via tv and internet, our research into Merit’s beauty regime has also brought us into contact with all kinds of fascinating people like artist and sociologist Amanda Jane Graham, her innovative work ‘The Coiffured’ “revealing the vast contributions of the hairdressing profession to the arts”. And in this Merit herself appears in the form of her gilded funerary mask, as if at the hairdressers (below) https://www.instagram.com/p/DKfK6xDAnUz/?hl=en
So despite our study’s modest scope, it demonstrates the way targeted forms of analysis can really help interpret how objects were once used, perhaps most importantly giving access to a private world, to an intimate part of a woman’s daily life as lived some three and a half thousand years ago.
Jo and Stephen will be appearing at Bolton Museum’s next study day on 20th September with details at: Bolton's Egypt Summer Study Day "Ancient Egypt's Art & Artists" Tickets, Sat, Sep 20, 2025 at 10:30 AM | Eventbrite
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