Being a beauty-therapist doesn't stop Noiren Carrig getting her hands dirty. And after years of pampering the ladies of Bray this Egyptologist is close to getting her own TV show.
RELIC HUNTER
BRAY HAS its very own Relic Hunter in beauty-therapist and Egyptologist Noiren Carrig, who is as at home on an archaeological dig as she is pampering the ladies of Bray.
The History Channel has even taken an interest in the local woman, and she has auditioned for a forthcoming reality programme on the station.
The first person in Ireland to graduate with a degree in Forensic Egyptology from the University of Manchester, Noiren's interest in ancient Egypt began in her childhood. She and her husband Connor Brady now visit the African country a few times a year.
Last year she embarked upon a 20,000 word dissertation on Anubis, the Egyptian God of mummification, thus completing five years of part-time study.
A highlight of her studies was an encounter with scientist Salima Ekram, a regular on the History Channel, whom she met during a trip to a mummy conference in Lanzarote.
Described as a 'demigod' in her field, Ekram had a sore neck – which Noiren duly rectified on a tour bus en route to the conference with a professional massage! Thus began a beautiful friendship.
She got a game based on ancient Egypt at the age of eight and was instantly fascinated. She got her first book on the subject at the age of ten.
A native of Scotland, Noiren moved to Kilmantin Park with her family at the age of four and to this day still has an Edinburgh twang. She has operated a beauty salon in the town for the last 22 years and is as passionate about her business as she is about her studies.
Hieroglyphics, a written language developed by the people of Egypt, as well as toxicology, carbon dating, and CT scanning are just some of the techniques in which she specialised during the completion of her degree.
Noirin explained that the University of Manchester has the largest 'mummy bank,' in the world, where tissue samples and complete remains are preserved for the purposes of study. She said that because the mummies begin to decompose rapidly after being taken from their tombs, they are preserved in glass cases.
'Some of them still even have henna in their hair,' she said of the remains of women in who would have died in their 50s. 'Red henna, teeth eyelashes still preserved after thousands of years.'
She said that this generation will not send information to future generations in the same way.
'We can even tell what someone had for dinner the day they died 2,500 years ago by doing a stomach biopsy,' she said. 'They were mummified to the point that stopped time.'
The road to enlightenment will not stop here for Noirin who will begin to study for her Masters in the autumn. She hopes to specialise in Mummies from the new kingdom, tomb workers who were worked to within an inch of their lives and were never allowed to leave the site for fear that they would reveal its secrets.
'95 per cent of Egypt's treasures are under the sand,' she said, adding that even esteemed scientists are wary of cursed tombs. 'So many people have had such bad fortune,' she said of the famed tomb of Tutankhamen. Neither Noiren nor even some of the leading Egyptologists in the world have had the courage yet to brave going in to its depths.
- Mary FOGARTY
