When you hear the word mummy, chances are you think of ancient Egypt. Many different cultures embalmed their deceased, however, and scientists have just found a particularly unexpected case. As detailed in a study published today in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, researchers analyzed a well-preserved 18th-century mummy from a small Austrian village. The individual […]
Archaeologist Who Uncovered Pharaoh’s Tomb May Have Just Made an Even Bigger Find
The stunning discovery of a pharaoh’s burial spot last week was a bombshell in the archaeology world. Not since Howard Carter located the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun in 1922 had such a site been found. There was only one problem: the pharaoh’s body wasn’t in the tomb. Now, the archaeologist who made the […]
Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Researchers Analyze the Surprising Smells of Ancient Egyptian Mummies
Here’s a question you’ve probably never thought of: What do Egyptian mummies smell like? An international team of researchers has a surprising answer: woody, spicy, and sweet (but if you’re inexplicably interested in things that smell like rotting bodies, check out the corpse flower). As detailed in a study published today in the Journal of […]
Lasers Expose Stunning Tattoo Art on 1,200-Year-Old Peruvian Mummies
If tattoos are prone to fading within a single human lifetime, imagine the wear-and-tear on the tattoos of 1,200-year-old mummies. An international team of researchers has, for the first time, used lasers to reveal tattoos on mummies from Peru. Using this technique, detailed in a January 13 study published in the journal PNAS, researchers uncovered […]