File: World’s first known pregnant Egyptian mummy was uncovered in Poland.
CAIRO - 3 May 2021: World’s first known pregnant Egyptian mummy was uncovered in Poland.
The Egyptian mummy was thought for decades to be a male priest, but it was finially discovered by scientists in Poland that it is for a pregnant woman, making it the first known case of its kind.
Computer scans and X-rays showed that the mummified woman died when she was 20 to 30 years old.
Wojciech Ejsmond, an archaeologist and a director of the Warsaw Mummy Project said that the scientists made this discovery while performing a comprehensive study, which started in 2015.
The research study which was lead by Ejsmond was conducted over more than 40 mummies at the National Museum in Warsaw.
“Our anthropologist was double-checking the pelvis area of the mummy to establish the sex of the mummy and check everything, and she observed something weird in the pelvis area, some kind of anomaly,” Ejsmond said to New York Times.
After extensive examination the anomaly was found to be a tiny leg of a fetus, approximately about 26 to 30 weeks old at the time.
After performing their noninvasive research, Polish scientists concluded that the mummy was mummified around the first century B.C.
The mummified woman was found to be of high status wrapped in linen and plain-weave fabrics.
The mummy was accompanied with a rich set of amulets.
Despite the fact that burials of pregnant women in ancient Egypt have been discovered before, this is the world’s first known discovery of a mummified pregnant woman.
The unexpected findings of the research were published in The Journal of Archaeological Science.
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