The mummy of an injured Egyptian girl was found
The mummy of an injured Egyptian girl was found…..
German experts have studied the mummified remains of a four-year-old girl who was buried in Egypt 2,000 years ago. She had a bandage on her leg to cover the festering wound, and scholars believe such infections were a common aspect of life in ancient Egypt.
German radiologist Stephanie Banzer of the Department of Radiology at the Murnau Trauma Clinic and colleagues from Italy and the United States, using computed tomography, examined the mummies of 21 children and in three cases found signs of purulent infection that could cause the death of these. children.
The mummy of a girl of 2.5-4 years old turned out to be the most curious, because she also preserved the remains of authentic ancient Egyptian clothing. It was discovered by German archaeologist Richard von Kaufmann as early as March 1892 in the so-called Alina tomb in the ancient Egyptian necropolis of El Khawar, near the Faiyum Oasis southwest of Cairo.
The tissue bandage found on the girl measured 20x12x9 mm and covered a substance similar to dry pus, indicating that the child had an abscess or purulent inflammation of the subcutaneous tissue.
It is not clear why the bandage was left on the wound, but the researchers suggest that the embalmers wanted to further prepare the girl’s body for life after death in this way.
“They may have been trying to prolong the healing process in this way into the afterlife,” paleopathologist Albert Zink, of the Italian Institute for the Study of the Mummy, told Business Insider in an interview.
Alina’s tomb, dating from about 24 AD, is distinguished by the fact that three of its eight mummified inhabitants were covered from above with their own images painted in a very realistic way.
The unknown girl, depicted with small braids and simple jewelry, is considered the center of the three daughters of Alina herself, after which the entire burial was named.
Alina is a middle- or upper-class woman whose name is best known by an inscription that also indicates that she died at the age of 35.
The tomb was a 2.8 x 3.5 m pit lined with mudstone, and mummy portraits, sometimes called “Tyre al-Fayoum” in relation to the area in which they were found, are usually associated with representatives of the middle or upper class in Egypt during the Roman period.
An article on this was published in the International Journal of Paleontology.
