SCIENTISTS SURPRISED BY WORLD’S FIRST KNOWN PREGNANT MUMMY

Polish researchers have announced the discovery of the world’s first known case of an embalmed pregnant woman after initially believing the mummy was a male priest, Asha C. Gilbert reported for USA TODAY.

Researchers were surprised when examinations and X-rays revealed the true identity of the mummy first brought to Warsaw, Poland in 1826, the Associated Press (AP) also reported.

“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,” Marzena Ozarek-Szilke, an anthropologist and archeologist, told AP. “When we saw the little foot and then the little hand (of the fetus), we were really shocked.”

The mummy previously was believed to be a male priest due to the inscription on the coffin and was not examined until the Warsaw Mummy Project, an initiative to examine human and animal mummies from ancient Egypt at the National Museum in Warsaw that began in 2015. For decades, it was thought the mummy belonged to an ancient Egyptian priest named Hor-Dehuti.

However, a discovery reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Thursday, April 29, 2021, scientists at the Warsaw Mummy Project said the mummy was in fact a woman in her 20s who was between 26 and 28 weeks pregnant, Reuters also reported.

The cause of death is not clear, but Ozarek-Szilke said the pregnancy may have had something to do with it.

"It is possible that the pregnancy itself contributed to the death of this woman. Now we have modern medicine, women who are between 20 and 30 weeks pregnant and something happens to the pregnancy, they have a chance to be rescued. It used to be impossible," she said.

The discovery sheds some light on the little-known role of children in ancient Egypt and the religious beliefs of the time, but also raises many questions, according to Wojciech Ejsmond, co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project.

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