World’s First PREGNANT Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered
Researchers in Poland found something surprising in the middle of their latest Egyptian mummy project; one of them was a mommy to be. The remains of a woman in her 20’s, discovered…
SYDNEY, NSW – JUNE 07: A pregnant woman holds her stomach June 7, 2006 in Sydney, Australia. Australia is currently enjoying a baby boom, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics registering a 2.4% increase in births from 2004 to 2005, which represents the highest number of births since 1992. The Australian Federal Government has been encouraging people to have more babies, with financial incentives and the slogan by treasurer Peter Costello to “have one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country”. The Federal Government has identified falling fertility rates and the ageing population as long-term problems for Australia’s growth and prosperity. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
Researchers in Poland found something surprising in the middle of their latest Egyptian mummy project; one of them was a mommy to be. The remains of a woman in her 20’s, discovered in the 1800s in the Royal Tombs of Thebes and on display in the National Museum in Warsaw, is one of the first subjects of the Warsaw Mummy Project. The Polish Academy of Sciences is using advanced scanning technology to find out more about mummies in museums around the world.
There aren’t any other pregnant mummies…as far as we know. The researchers can’t say why the fetus was left inside the woman and not mummified separately, but one theory is that the ancient Egyptians thought that, since it was too young to have a name, it needed to travel to the afterlife inside its mother.
Dr. Wojciech Ejsmond is excited about the find, saying it provides the possibility to study pregnancy in ancient times, and that scientists can study what’s in the intestines of the 26-to-30-week-old fetus to find out more about “the development of the immune system in ancient times.”
