A Polish archaeological research team says it has discovered a pregnant Egyptian mummy dating to the first century B.C. The findings were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science April 28. The research is part of the Warsaw Mummy Project, which began in 2015, that uses technology to examine human and animal mummies housed in the National Museum in Warsaw. In this case, a radiological examination showed the mummified woman had been pregnant.
The Polish scientists said the discovery is the first of its kind. The body is believed to have belonged to a high-status woman of the medical community and is wrapped in linen and plain weave fabrics and accompanied with a rich set of amulets. Close examination showed the woman likely died in her 20s and was between 26 to 30 weeks pregnant.
There was no official Egyptian comment about the Polish discovery, which stirred a debate among Egyptian archaeologists about the precedent of this case and calls to return the mummy to Egypt. Zahi Hawass, a former Egyptian minister of antiquities, said this is not the first case of a pregnant mummy, as another pregnant mummy was discovered in 2010. The body belonged to a dwarf dating back 4,600 years and was discovered in the tombs of workers who built the pyramids, he said.
Hawass told Al-Monitor, “We discovered this mummy in the workers’ graves and at the time it was a first case. What the Polish scientists discovered is not something new to us”.
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However, Abdul Rahim Rayhan, director general of research, archaeological studies and scientific publishing in the region of archaeology of the southern Sinai Peninsula, told Al-Monitor that the Polish finding is the first of its kind in the sense that no pregnant mummy with a fetus still inside the uterus has been discovered before. “There have been previous discoveries of mummies that suffered complicated childbirths,” he said.
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