CAIRO – 30 October 2022: When archaeologist Howard Carter first found King Tutankhamun’s tomb, he paid little attention to a plain wooden box that later turned out to contain two tiny resin-coated caskets, each holding a smaller sarcophagus wrapped in gold leaf.
Two little mummies were housed within these coffins. As he numbered the box 317 and examined its contents, Carter was occupied.
The mummies were not thoroughly inspected, according to Archaeology, until they were dissected and photographed in 1932.
They were later determined to be the remains of two dead female foetuses.
Sahar Selim, a radiologist at Cairo University who specialises in looking at mummies, discovered the most recent finding on these two young girls.
Sahar Selim examined the foetuses ten years ago while working as a radiologist for the Egyptian Mummy Project.
This was the first time any embalmed fetus was studied using this technique, and although there is no evidence of the children’s personal names they were identified only by golden stickers on their coffins bearing the name Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead. They were indeed Tutankhamun’s and Ankhesenamun’s daughters. They were buried with their father after his death.
Although the mummies were badly damaged, specialist Sahar Selim found that the two girls died at 24 and 36 weeks of pregnancy and it was previously known that the older girl had her organs removed as is customary to prepare the deceased for embalming. Selim discovered an organ removal incision as well as packing material similar to that used to cover the skin of royal mummies to give them a more lifelike appearance.
The Grand Egyptian Museum’s Archaeological Selections Unit, under the direction of Nassef Abdel Wahed, tracked the development of the embryos until the Faculty of Medicine was able to pinpoint where they had been.
Coordination was made with the Department of Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine until the Department of First Restoration and Packaging and the Department of Archaeological Stores at the Grand Egyptian Museum transferred the embryos on April 3, 2014 to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
In October 2016, their coffins were also moved from the Tahrir Museum.
How were the daughters of Tutankhamun’s foetuses found?
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