“Living Fossils”

Abstract This article traces the scientific afterlife of the mummy Queen Henhenit from excavation and circulation to examination and display in twentieth-century Egypt. Believed to have the oldest vesicovaginal fistula in medical history, Henhenit’s body held large implications for global anthropology and the practice of medicine in a newly independent Egypt. Henhenit’s story illuminates material histories of race and reproduction. This article examines this fictive linking of ancient and living women’s bodies and how these women became objects of scientific observation and study, largely without their consent. It argues that pelvic bones and labor power of Upper Egyptian women took on new scientific and cultural meanings in the first half of the twentieth century as scientists and social reformers returned to the womb seeking answers to the “puzzle” of Egyptian racial origins and hopes to decrease the country’s infant mortality rate. As such, it reflects on the limits and limitations of thinking with women’s bodies as material archives of history.