Pregnant mummy from the collection of the University of Warsaw Museum

Researchers working on the Warsaw Mummy Project (Warsaw Mummy Interdisciplinary Research Project),

that is, doctoral PhD students from our University – Marzena Ożarek-Szilke, Kamila Braulińska and Wojciech Ejsmond – made an extraordinary discovery.

They discovered that the mummy from the collections of the University of Warsaw Museum (on loan to the National Museum in Warsaw) [MNW]) is the embalmed body of a pregnant woman! This is the only known example in the world!

According to the records, the mummy was allegedly discovered in the royal tombs in Thebes in Upper Egypt. However, this is not certain. We do know that it was in the possession of the University of Warsaw in 1826. It was transported in a sarcophagus that had been made for the Theban priest Hor-Djehuti, who lived in the 1st century BCE. At the time of her death the woman was aged between 20 and 30 years and in an advanced stage of pregnancy (between 26 and 30 weeks). Her mummy can now be found in the Gallery of Ancient Art at the National Museum in Warsaw, as are many of the other loans from the Warsaw University Museum which make up the main part of the exhibition devoted to Ancient Egypt.

The findings of the research on the mummy were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science and immediately became a worldwide sensation.

The discovery was reported by science and popular science portals (the Polish Academy of Sciences, Science in Poland, Phys.org, Archaeology, the Smithsonian Magazine, the Live Science, the National Geographic, Gizmodo), the national media in Poland (including TVP Info, Polsat, TVN), as well as: BBC, Guardian, New York Times,The Washington Post, South China Morning Post, Euronews, Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, People, El Pais (Spain), CNN, CBS, NBC, Fox23 News, Australian ABC television, Canadian CTV, Irish RTE, Philippine ABS-CBN, the agencies Reuters, Associated Press, the Xinhua News Agency (China), Sputnik and Interfax (Russia), China Internet Information Center, Nasdaq, the New York Post, The Irish Times, the Daily Mail, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, Corriere della Sera, the USA Today, the National Post (Canada), The Sun, Hürriyet Daily News (Turkey), RTL (Germany and Netherlands), RAI (Italy), Indiatimes.com, Hindustan Times, The Tribune (India), Dawn (Pakistan), the Toronto Star, Express, La Croix (France), Bild (Germany), Le Matin (Switzerland), Aftonbladet (Sweden), the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, Business Insider, Designboom, MSN, Yahoo, Newsweek (US), U.S.News & World Report, France24 (France); the German, Swiss, Austrian, Luxembourg, Czech, Chilean and Singapore press; Arabic, Ukrainian, Armenian, Mexican, Thai, Brazilian, Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese, Bangladeshi, Indian and American local media outlets such as Cincinnati Local12, WSB-TV (Atlanta), 104.5WOKV (Florida) plus many, many others.