A pregnant ancient Egyptian mummy has been discovered for the first time in shocking world

Archaeologists believe they were scanning the mummy of the ancient Egyptian priest Hall Jehuti. Then, on the abdomen of the corpse, the image showed what appeared to be the bones of a small foot.

A full scan confirmed it: the foot belonged to a tiny fetus, still in the womb of the deceased mummified mother.

Not only is this the first time a pregnant woman has been deliberately mummified, it also presents a fascinating mystery. Who was that woman? Why was she mummified with the fetus? The discovery is so bizarre that scientists have dubbed her the Mysterious Lady of the National Museum in Warsaw.

"For unknown reasons, the fetus was not removed from the abdomen during the mummification process," Wojciech Ejsmond, an archaeologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, told the journal Science Poland.

"So this mummy is really unique. Our mummy is the only one in the world to date that has been confirmed to have a fetus in the womb."

The mummy and its sarcophagus were donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826 and have been kept in the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland, since 1917. This stash has an interesting history. The mummy was originally thought to be female, possibly because of the elaborate sarcophagus.

It wasn't until the names on coffins and cartons were translated around 1920 that perceptions changed. The text showed that the person who was buried was named Hall-Jehuti and was in a high position.

"Scribe, priest of Ho Roto, worshipped as a visiting deity on Mount Jigme, royal governor of the town of Permiten, Hall-Jehuti, on the grounds of sound, son of Padiamonimbee and tower Lady of the Natmin family," the translator wrote.

In 2016, however, CT scans revealed that the mummy in the sarcophagus may not have been Hall-Jehuti. The bones are too fragile, the male reproductive organs are missing, and the 3D reconstruction shows the breasts.

Considering that the artifact was not fully processed with the best treatment in the 19th century, and considering that the coffins and Egyptian mummy boxes were indeed for male mothers, it seems that a completely different mummy was put into the sarcophagus in some way - perhaps through the artifact More valuable.

The researchers say this is evidenced by injuries to some of the mummy's bandages - likely caused by looters in the 19th century while they were searching for the amulet.

Therefore, it is impossible to know who this woman really was, or even that she came from Thebes where the coffin was found; however, some facts can be deduced from her remains.

First, she was meticulously mummified, complete with a rich set of amulets, indicating that she was an important figure in her own right – mummification was a luxury in ancient Egypt, unavailable to most people.

X-rays and CT scans of the mummy's abdomen revealed the fetus. (Ejsmond et al., J. Archaeol. Science., 2021)

She died more than 2,000 years ago, around the 1st century BC, between the ages of 20 and 30, with fetal development suggesting she was 26 to 30 weeks pregnant.

As a pregnant mummy discovered for the first time, the mysterious woman raises fascinating questions about the spiritual beliefs of ancient Egyptians, researchers say. Did the ancient Egyptians believe that an unborn fetus could pass into the afterlife, or was this mummy a strange anomaly?

It's unclear how she died, but the team believes that analysis of the mummy's preserved soft tissue may provide some clues.

"It's no secret that high mortality rates during pregnancy and childbirth," Esmond said. "We therefore believe that pregnancy may have contributed to the death of this young woman."