oldest egyptian mummy found

Egyptian archeologists discovered human remains covered in resin and fragments of linen at Sakkara near Cairo last week, and claim the bones provide the oldest evidence of purposeful mummification in Egypt yet found. The remains, thought to be some 5000 years old, were inside a cedar-wood coffin, which was found inside a mud-brick tomb, amid some 20 other tombs, thought to date from 3100 to 2890 BC, during Egypt’s First Dynasty. If this was an early attempt at mummification, it wasn’t completely successful: the remains look more like a pile of bones than the well-preserved mummies of later dynasties we’re used to seeing in museums. Practice obviously made preservation perfect.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/08/2003.