World's Only Known Pregnant Egyptian Mummy Revealed
In the early 19th century, the University of Warsaw acquired an Egyptian mummy encased in an elaborate coffin identifying the deceased as a priest named Hor-Djehuty. Nearly 200 years later, in 2016, researchers using X-ray technology were surprised to discover that the mummified remains belonged not to a man, as the inscription indicated, but to an unidentified young woman. Then came another revelation: While examining images of the mummy’s pelvic area, researchers spotted a tiny foot—a sure sign that the woman was pregnant at the time of her death. Writing in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the team describes the find as “the only known case of an embalmed pregnant individual.”
Experts with the Warsaw Mummy Project do not know who the woman was or exactly where her body was discovered. Though the individual who donated the mummy to the university claimed it came from the royal tombs at Thebes the study notes that “in many cases antiquities were misleadingly ascribed to famous places in order to increase their value.” When the mummy first arrived in Poland, researchers assumed it was female because its coffin was covered in colorful and luxurious ornaments.
After the hieroglyphs on the coffin were translated in the 1920s, however, the body was reclassified as male based on inscriptions bearing the name of a scribe and priest, writes Lianne Kolirin for CNN. As a result, when modern researchers undertook a non-invasive study of the mummy using X-ray and CT scans, they expected to find a male body beneath the ancient wrappings. “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,” co-author Marzena Ozarek-Szilke, an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Warsaw, tells the AP. “When we saw the little foot and then the little hand [of the fetus], we were really shocked.”
At some point, it seems, the body of a pregnant woman was placed inside the wrong coffin. Ancient Egyptians are known to have reused coffins, so the switch may have happened many centuries ago. But the study also notes that during the 19th century, illegal excavators and looters often partially unwrapped mummies and searched for valuable objects before returning the bodies to coffins—“not necessarily the same ones in which the mummy had been found.” The Warsaw mummy does indeed show signs of looting—namely, damaged wrappings around the neck, which may have once held amulets and a necklace.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-reveal-first-known-pregnant-egyptian-mummy-180977637/
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