Unique find: Egyptian mummy turned out to be pregnant
The Polish Academy of Sciences scanned all the ancient Egyptian mummies in local museums and made an interesting discovery. One of the mummies, which was previously thought to be a man, turned out to be a 20-year-old woman who was embalmed with a fetus inside.
A group of Polish scientists found out that an Egyptian mummy, which was previously thought to be a man, is actually a woman in the late stages of pregnancy. It appears to be the only known example of an embalmed pregnant Egyptian mummy.
The mummy, which has been in the National Museum in Warsaw (Poland) since 1917, was found in the Royal Tombs in Thebes in the 1800s. She was embalmed about 2 thousand years ago, when Cleopatra reigned.
The pregnant mummy was brought to Warsaw in 1826. The inscription on her coffin indicated that it was a male religious figure, a priest named Khor-Dehuti. Until recently, no preliminary examination of the mummy indicated that it could be a woman.
For the new study, scientists decided to scan the body and were surprised to find that in fact, a woman in the seventh month of pregnancy is lying in the coffin.
According to scientists, this is the only known case of a well-preserved pregnant Egyptian mummy. They determined that the woman was between 20 and 30 years old. And the size of the fetal skull suggests that she was somewhere between 26 and 28 weeks pregnant.
According to the author of the study, Dr. Wojciech, the child was left in the mother's body because it had not yet been born and had not received a name. This directly affects the fact that he would not be able to go on an afterlife journey, and therefore the embalmers decided to remove only the internal organs of the woman.
Scientists say the discovery provides new opportunities to explore pregnancy and the ancient practices associated with it.