Archive Note
Her mummy was excavated by Eugene Grebaut at Deir el-Bahari in 1891 and first documented by Georges Daressy in 1893, making her the first professionally recorded Egyptian tattoo case. As a priestess of Hathor, goddess tied to fertility and childbirth, she carries dots arranged in elliptical and linear patterns clustered on the thighs and lower abdomen, which scholars have read as connected to fertility and sexuality. The patterns set a typology that shaped how later Egyptian female tattoo finds were interpreted, including Anne Austin's later infrared work on the Deir el-Medina mummies. For a long time Amunet was considered the oldest confirmed tattooed woman, but in 2018 radiocarbon dating of the Gebelein Woman at the British Museum, placed at roughly 3351 to 3017 BC, moved that distinction back by more than a thousand years. Her mummy is held at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.