It had been in the Egyptian Museum since it was discovered in 1916 near Edfu, where a burial site from the late Ptolemaic period of Egyptian history (circa 332-30 BC) had been found. More than a hundred years ago he came out from under the sand, a little mummy neatly wrapped in a wooden coffin and bandages.
Under the linen, what glitters is gold, which is why the mummy has been nicknamed ‘Golden Boy’. Researchers at Cairo University placed the gilded lad in a CT scanner and reproduced some of his grave goods with a 3D printer. They published their results this week in the magazine Frontiers in Medicine.
The Golden Boy is a man around 14 years old, height 1,277 meters. His gender was also confirmed by the fact that his penis – measuring 41 millimeters – was still clearly visible. His embalmers had handled this delicate organ with the utmost care. It was wrapped in linen and had an amulet next to it, probably to protect the soft flesh from the incision in the abdominal wall through which the organs were extracted.
The lavishness with which the boy was sent to the afterlife shows that he came from a distinguished family. He wore a gilded face mask and carried 49 amulets of 21 different kinds. They were placed on and in the body, neatly arranged in three columns. Many amulets were made of gold, others of precious stones and faience (glazed fired pottery).
Also special were the gilded tongue of the deceased and a golden scarab (a sacred, beetle-shaped jewel) near his heart. In order not to harm the mummy, this jewel was reconstructed with a 3D printer and placed in a prominent place in the Egyptian Museum.
The boy’s sandals are also well preserved. They were of great importance, said lead researcher Sahar Saleem in a press release. “Those sandals were necessary so that the deceased could walk out of his coffin in the afterlife.”
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