Wrapped in bandages and long presumed to be a male priest, an ancient Egyptian mummy held at the National Museum of Warsaw has yielded one of the most unexpected revelations in recent archaeological research. Scientists from the Warsaw Mummy Project have confirmed that the individual is a woman who was between 6.5 and 7.5 months pregnant at the time of her death—the first known pregnant mummy ever identified.
“It’s like finding a treasure trove while you are picking up mushrooms in a forest,” said Dr. Wojciech Ejsmond, an archaeologist and co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project. “We are overwhelmed with this discovery.”
The breakthrough came late in the research process. The team had already completed their examinations and was preparing to submit findings when co-director Marzena Ożarek-Szilke took a final look at the imaging. “We had the last look at the images and noticed a familiar image for parents of three children,” she recalled. “A tiny foot.” Further analysis revealed that the foot belonged to a fetus. The mummy herself, previously believed to be male based on the coffin’s inscriptions, was a woman estimated to have been between 20 and 30 years old when she died.
Radiological and 3D scans provided clear evidence of her sex and condition. Long, curly hair and mummified breasts were visible, along with the developing fetus. The woman had been mummified around the first century B.C., wrapped in linens and plain-weave fabrics, and buried with amulets—indicators of elevated social status.
The misidentification had deep roots. Hieroglyphs on the coffin named an Egyptian priest, Hor-Djehuty. Radiological examinations in the 1990s reinforced the assumption that the occupant was male. Yet the original documentation from 1826, when the mummy was donated to the University of Warsaw, correctly labeled her as “the mummy of a lady.” That note was later discarded after the hieroglyphs were translated.
How a pregnant woman ended up in a priest’s coffin remains one of the more complex aspects of the case. “We know that in ancient times coffins were reused,” Ejsmond explained. “Sometimes tombs were robbed and stolen so that they could be reused. During the 18th and 19th centuries, mummies’ tombs were robbed and antiquity dealers were stealing precious items and replacing bodies.” Damage around the mummy’s neck suggests robbers may have removed some of her amulets. Ejsmond estimates that roughly 10 percent of mummies are found in the “wrong” coffin as a result of such activity.
An additional puzzle emerged from the scans: four mummified packages inside the abdominal cavity, consistent with the standard practice of removing, embalming, and returning the lungs, liver, stomach, intestines, and heart. The fetus, however, had been left untouched. “This whole discovery brought our attention to the question of why [the fetus] was not removed,” Ejsmond said. “We don’t know why it was left there. Maybe there was a religious reason. Maybe they thought the unborn child didn’t have a soul or that it would be safer in the next world. Or maybe it was because it was very difficult to remove a child at that stage from the womb without causing serious damage.”
Researchers with the Warsaw Mummy Project have hypothesized that the ancient Egyptians may have regarded the unborn child as still an integral part of the mother’s body. Naming was considered essential to full personhood; without a name, the fetus might not have been viewed as a separate individual. Its afterlife, therefore, could only occur as part of its mother.
The discovery shifts attention toward questions of women’s lives, prenatal care, and beliefs about the afterlife in ancient Egypt. For the Warsaw Mummy Project team, the unexpected find has opened a new window onto a society that continues to surprise those who study it—two millennia after this woman and her unborn child were carefully prepared for eternity.