A 1,700-year-old Egyptian mummy has been revealed to be a boy dressed in girl’s clothing, thanks to high-tech hospital scans.
The child, who lived around 350 AD, underwent scans as experts hoped to determine its sex and discover how it suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage. The mummy, housed at Saffron Walden Museum in Essex, Britain, was shrouded in mystery after it was discovered in a private collection in 1878.
Studies in 2009 discovered it was wrapped in clothing adorned in feminine symbols, wearing girl’s breast cones and a female bracelet, reports the Daily Mail. Groundbreaking CT scans carried out at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge have finally solved the mystery, revealing the mummy is a boy dressed in girl’s clothing. These stunning images also show that the boy, aged four to five, mysteriously suffered a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage and a broken collarbone before dying. Museum curator Carolyn Wingfield said the mummy was also two or three years younger than first believed.
She said: “Clear pictures of internal organs, bones and wrappings were obtained which confirmed the sex as male, and from tooth and bone growth the child was aged to four to five years of age.” “His bones were sturdy, but a fracture was visible above the right temple, and the right collarbone was fractured, also before death.”
Neuro-radiographer Halina Szutowicz, who conducted the scans, said the results ruled out a previous theory that the child had been murdered.