Egypt's Mummified 'gold Boy' Digitally Unwrapped 2,300 Years After His Burial

Entrance to the Egyptian Museum AMIR MAKAR / Contributor/Getty Images

Egyptian researchers have ‘digitally unwrapped’ the mummified remains of a teenager buried 2,300 years ago, known as Egypt’s ‘golden boy’. Cairo University radiologists used CT scans to examine the remains non-invasively and revealed he was adorned with a gold mask and 49 protective amulets, reports NBC News.

The boy’s remains were first discovered in 1916 in a cemetery in southern Egypt called Nag el-Hassay, which dates from around 332 BC to 332 BC. and 30 B.C. was used. According to CNN, he was sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo along with thousands of other preserved bodies unearthed in Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries. Due to the destructive process of unpacking preserved remains, the golden boy was moved to the museum’s basement and remained unexamined until recently.

When the study authors scanned the body, they identified 49 protective amulets of 21 different designs inside the body and between the wrappings, including a gold heart in his chest and a gold tongue in his mouth. Researchers say the amulets were placed by embalmers to ease the boy’s passage into the afterlife. They were also able to 3D print a copy of the heart scarab using data from the CT scans, reports CNN.

Saheer Saleem, a co-author of the study and a professor of radiology at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine, told NBC News that the discoveries revealed clues about the boy’s socioeconomic status while also providing insight into the importance of amulets in the afterlife. Because the corpse went through a “very expensive and painstaking modification process,” Saleem suspected that “he came from a very wealthy family, or perhaps a noble family.”

The golden boy was moved to the main exhibition hall of the Egyptian Museum. It will be displayed with the CT images and the 3D printed heart scarab to give visitors more insight into the traditions of ancient Egyptian death rites. “The aim of the exhibition was to humanize this individual from the past in order to teach modern people about life in ancient times,” the researchers write in the study.

The story goes on

Egypt’s mummified ‘gold boy’ digitally unwrapped 2,300 years after his burial

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