Persian mummy

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The so-called Persian mummy is an outstanding archaeological fake that was discovered in November 2000 and caused international tension between Iran and Pakistan .

The discovery

During a raid in the West Pakistani border town of Quetta , police discovered a wooden shrine with a stone sarcophagus with a female mummy inside , following an anonymous tip in the house of the camel farmer Hadji Ali Aqbar . She appeared 2,600 years old to be and should for $ 20 million on the antiques - black market are sold. The wooden shrine was covered with cuneiform characters and stylized depictions of cypress , among other things . The mummy, like the ancient Egyptian models, was completely wrapped in resin-soaked linen (but now rock-hard) and covered with a golden face mask and crown and a golden breastplate, which also contained cuneiform characters. According to the first investigations of the equipment and labeling, the mummy should be the daughter of the Persian great king Xerxes I (486-465 BC). The inscription read: “I am the daughter of the great King Xerxes. I am Rhodugune. ”(Alternative translation also“ I am Ruduamna ”or“ Rudumna ”).

The international experts were enthusiastic about this sensational find, as it was the first mummy that was found outside of Egypt using ancient Egyptian technology and that apparently came from Persia. At the time, Persia had extended its sphere of influence as far as Egypt and Egyptian artists also worked in Persia, but mummifications based on the Egyptian model seemed to have been completely unusual there. The only written source suggesting that the Persians also embalmed their dead in wax comes from a passage by the Greek historian Herodotus about his visit to the tomb of Cyrus the Great . But this source was only second-hand and was only written 700 years after the visit.

Reactions

Press reports after the find led to the government of Iran and even the Taliban claiming the find for themselves. It is said to be a cultural heritage from the national territory of Iran and has apparently been illegally exported. The claims led to international tensions between Pakistan and Iran for a while, which grew when the Iranians threatened to involve both Interpol and UNESCO . The Taliban even claimed that they had now caught and punished the alleged smugglers.

Investigations

During the investigations by the curator of the National Museum in Pakistan, Dr. Asma Ibrahim and other scientists began to notice the first peculiarities. It was found that the mummy's heart was missing. The ancient Egyptians would never have removed this, because for them the heart was the seat of the soul and intelligence and had to be preserved for life in posterity.

When analyzing the cuneiform scripts, other peculiarities emerged. The Persian princess was called Wadugana during her lifetime . It was not until many centuries later that the Greeks translated their name with Rhodugune . The sentence also contained a grammatical error that would never have been made by the scribes working on behalf of the king. With that the inscription was already exposed as a forgery. Pencil markings and measurements were also discovered. The examining experts decided to cut open the rock-hard wrapping of the mummy and to examine it further with a computer tomograph . It was found that the brain of the mummy was also removed unprofessionally from below through the chin (the ancient Egyptians had their own tools for this, with which the brain could be removed practically liquefied through the nose). Furthermore, pieces of the wrapping have been released for age determination.

It was also found that the mummy had a fractured spine and neck. When examining the head, fiber strands were also found in the ossicles in the ear. That was the last evidence that the mummy had been professionally forged and that the female person used for it had actually only died around 1996 , according to the results of the additional radiocarbon dating carried out at the University of Erlangen . These results were reason enough for the Pakistani police to arrest the camel farmer Hadji Ali Aqbar on suspicion of murder. However, it is unclear whether the person was actually murdered or a stolen corpse was used for the forgery. A phantom image of the person was created from the skull , which is used in the search for clues.

More than one person must have been involved in the forgery of the mummy. It took a cuneiform expert to forge the inscriptions, knowledge of old mummification techniques, aging techniques, a stonemason for the sarcophagus, carvers for the wooden shrine, etc. After two more forged mummies later appeared, one suspects a whole forger workshop behind the finds . The backers are still being sought.

reception

The case was in the WDR produced Münster crime scene - TV thriller Curse of the mummy taken where forensic pathologist Dr. K.-F. Börne ( Jan Josef Liefers ) and Commissioner Frank Thiel ( Axel Prahl ), among other things, find out about a fraudulent archeology professor who presents a self-made “Persian mummy” to the professional world, which the investigators' investigations then revealed as the first reveals recently deceased murder victim.

literature

  • Alexander Mönch (Ed.): Autopsy. Mysterious deaths. 14 crime stories. blue eyes Sound & Motion, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-9808179-0-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Kretschmer The Riddle of the Persian Mummy: Original or Fake? , Berlin 2003
  2. ^ "The Curse of the Mummy" ( Memento from February 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (first broadcast on May 16, 2010 on ARD )

Web links