Originally,  Tutu was known as Princess Menne.  In 1992, Dr. Emily Teeter of the Oriental Institute in Chicago translated the hieroglyphics on her breastplate and realized her name was actually Tutu.  She died in approximately 332 BC in the Ptolemaic Period.  She was found in the Faiyum area of Egypt, near the Pyramid of Hawara-el-Market.   Tutu was gifted to the Glen Island museum in 1898. In 1921, the contents of the bankrupt Glen Island museum were auctioned and  Fr. Gerrer purchased Tutu for the museum.

 

Tutu was x-rayed in 1963 at the University of Oklahoma Medical School and again in 1991 at Shawnee Medical Center Hospital.  In 1993, Bob Pickering, then of the Denver Museum of Natural History, analyzed the x-rays and CT scans.  He found that Tutu's brain was removed via the nose as is normal in the mummification process (the bones in the nasal passages have been broken).  Her back shows that she suffered from arthritis.  Her arms are folded over her chest as is consistent with high status mummifications.  Her organs were removed and separately mummified.  Two bundles of mummified organs are located in her chest cavity. Tutu was in her 40’s when she died, and she had given birth.  Her mouth was opened to allow evil spirits to escape from the body and to allow her ka to partake in the food and drinks left in her tomb.  She has most of her teeth which is unusual for her time, because of the poor diet.  

 

Tutu's heiroglyphics also reveal that her father was Pahor and her mother was Neferseneb. The prayers on the breastplate invoke Osiris and Sokar, (a god of the underworld and sometimes incarnation of Osiris), asking for "good burial" and mentioning that bread, beer, oxen, and fowl were left as offerings.