Archaeologists at the Polish Academy of Sciences were shocked by an amazing find. They discovered that whoever was underneath the bandages most certainly did not match the name on the box. They were doing a CT scan of an allegedly male priest. What they found proves it couldn’t be him. The mummy is a pregnant woman with fetus. The first mummy of a “mummy” ever recorded.
An Amazing find
When people think of Egypt, the first things that comes to mind are pyramids and mummy’s. A team of archaeological scientists were stunned and amazed to find that the priest they were supposed to be x-raying turned out to be a female, and a pregnant one at that.
They really have no idea who she was or her position in society but it must have been important enough for a top dollar funeral. It’s amazing that a relic uncovered in the early 19th century can still produce impressive new insight today.
As described by the New York Post, scientists were “shocked” to find “the well-preserved ancient remains of a pregnant woman between 20 to 30 years old.” They were working on a specimen carbon dated to the 1st century BC.
The mummy had been originally discovered during an 1826 expedition, along the Nile River in the city of Thebes. Eventually, it ended up in Poland.
The Polish Academy of Sciences has been running what’s referred to as the Warsaw Mummy Project. They just got started on examining this body, which had been designated as belonging to a male priest.
When they ran the mummified remains through both conventional X-rays and and a CT scan, they noticed a discrepancy which led to the amazing find.
No penis but breasts and long hair
If this mummy was associated with religious authority in Egypt, then she was a priestess, not a priest. The noteworthy find was “the remains of a fetus around 26 to 30 weeks old.”
The scientists were a little puzzled when the x-rays didn’t show a penis. Looking closer they noticed breasts and long hair. Looking even closer than that, they found the baby.
“Our first surprise was that it has no penis, but instead it has breasts and long hair, and then we found out that it’s a pregnant woman,” archaeologist Marzena Ozarek-Szilke relates.
“When we saw the little foot and then the little hand (of the fetus), we were really shocked.” The find will probably score them a prize. The body has been collecting dust in Warsaw since 1826. The coffin it came in “was initially named for a male priest.”
What makes the find so special is no pregnant mummy has ever been discovered before. “This is our most important and most significant finding so far, a total surprise,” explains research lead Dr. Wojciech Ejsmond.
“It opens possibilities of learning about pregnancy and treatment of complications in ancient times.” The mummy was “wrapped in fabrics and was entombed with several amulets that represent the four sons of Horus, the ancient Egyptian god of kingship and the sky.”