12 recent, spooky discoveries about ancient death rituals, from vampire burials to vanishing mummy pregnancies
Marianne Guenot
- Archaeology is always trying to understand more about how we treat our dead.
- A slew of recent studies revealed more information about ancient burial rituals.
Archaeology provides fascinating insights into the complex rites humans have used to send off our dead.
In time for Halloween, here are 12 discoveries made recently about death and burial practices, based on recent archaeological findings.
An ancient Egyptian mummy may not have been a male priest been, but a pregnant woman
A mummy previously thought to have been a male priest in ancient Egypt was found to be a woman, a study reported in January.
The mummy had previously been found in the sarcophagus Hor-Djehuty, an ancient Egyptian male priest who lived between the 1st century BC and the 1st AD, Insider previously reported.
Some scientists also believe that she was likely pregnant, which would make her the first documented example of a mummified pregnancy in history.
A 'bundle' in the mummified oven.
By putting the mummy through a CT scanner — a fancy scanner that can reconstruct the body's bones, soft tissue, and skin in a 3D model — scientists identified mummified breast tissue and lack of a penis, which shows that the body was likely a woman.
They also found a bundle in the mummy's midriff, which looks conspicuously like a fetus.
The finding, they think, would mean the woman would have been buried with the fetus still in place, a peculiar occurrence for an ancient Egyptian burial as organs are usually removed for mummification.
The fetus was 'pickled,' some scientists think.
In a further study, scientists suggested the fetus was missed by previous scans because it was pickled, leaving no bones to detect.
They argued the bones may have dissolved due to the combination of the embalming agents and the decomposition of the body.
Not everybody agrees. Others have claimed that the shape found in the mummy's midriff could be mummified organs.
A body buried with a sickle around its neck could have been a 'vampire'
Last month, scientists revealed the site of a possible "vampire" burial.
The body, found in a cemetery in Pién, Poland, was of a 17th-century woman.
She was buried with a sickle around the neck and a padlock around the big toe.
"The sickle was not laid flat but placed on the neck in such a way that if the deceased had tried to get up, most likely the head would have been cut off or injured," dig lead Professor Dariusz Poliński from Nicolaus Copernicus University told the Daily Mail.
The vampire myth ruled European burials for centuries.
This wasn't the first example of a "deviant" burial practice. There are several documented examples of people being buried in ways meant to keep them from harming the living, Insider previously reported.
One example is remains buried with a stone or a brick in the mouth, like the example of a 16th-century woman above.
This would have prevented the body from chewing inside the grave and "spreading the plague in a sort of black magical way," Matteo Borrini, principal lecturer of forensic anthropology at the Liverpool John Moore University who worked on "vampire" burials, previously told Insider.
An 'extremely rich' woman was buried with dozens of gold rings in her hair.
The body of a woman buried with 169 gold rings in her hair was discovered in Romania, archaeologists told the media in August.
Museum director Gabriel Moisa said the woman, who died about 6,500 years ago, was likely "extremely rich," Insider's Bethany Dawson previously reported.
She was also found with 800 bone beads and an ornate spiraled copper bracelet.
Inca children were likely given a powerful hallucinogenic before their ritual sacrifice
Inca children were likely given ayahuasca before a ritual sacrifice, a study published in April found.
The study looked at two child mummies found frozen in 1995 near the top of the Ampato mountain, a 20,630 ft-tall dormant volcano in the Andes Cordillera in Southern Peru.
It found traces of components that are typically used to make up ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic. Read More
The ayahuasca was likely to keep the children happy rather than high.
The drug was probably used less for its hallucinogenic properties than for its mood-altering effect, Dagmara Socha, the study lead and a bioarchaeologist from the Centre for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw, told Insider at the time.
The Incas believed it was important to make sure the children were happy as they were sent off to the gods, she said.
"In the past, we didn't even know if the Inca used the ayahuasca. Now we can see that they could have been aware that it's an antidepressant," she told Insider.
40 beheaded Romans were found buried with their head between their legs
The bodies of 40 Romans were found with their heads stuck between their legs, an announcement revealed in February.
The bodies were found among 425 bodies buried in a late Roman cemetery in Buckinghamshire in England.
Archaeologists studying the site said that the ritual could mean that the decapitated remains belonged to outcasts or criminals, though beheading was a "normal, albeit marginal, burial rite," Insider's Alia Shoab reported.
A cache of ancient Egyptian tools provides clues about embalming techniques
The largest-ever cache of embalming tools was discovered near Abusir, Egypt, according to a study published in February.
The tools were likely buried after a lavish funeral about 2,600 years ago, likely of one of the highest dignitaries of his time, around the 6th century BC.
The deposit of at least 370 ceramic jars could provide unprecedented insight into the mummification process, which remains pretty mysterious, experts told Insider.
About dozen a pre-Inca people were likely sacrificed to accompany one dignitary in death.
The mummified remains of 14 people — six of whom were children — were found in one site in Cajamarquilla, Peru, according to a study published in February.
Most of these people, buried 800 to 1000 years ago, were likely killed to accompany one high-ranking dignitary in death, said Pieter van Dalen Luna, the lead archaeologist at the dig.
"Andine societies believed that after passing away, people didn't disappear. Death wasn't an ending but a beginning, a transition to a parallel world," he said, Reuters reported at the time.
A pre-Inca dignitary was found mummified, bound, and clasping his hands to his face.
Archeologists revealed the discovery of a "unique" mummy with his hands bound to his face in January.
According to Pieter Van Dalen Luna, lead archaeologist on the dig, his burial site "makes it clear that this is someone of high status," he told CNN at the time.
The body, found in Cajamarquilla near Lima, Peru, would have been young, under 35, and buried about 800 years ago.
The way the body was bound is not unusual for burials at the time. But archaeologists are excited about the incredible state of preservation of the remains.
"The problem in many sites in southern America is that they're extensively robbed by the grave robbers, so you need to be very lucky to find a mummy intact like this," Socha, who wasn't involved in the study, told Insider.
A skeleton with a nail through its foot is likely a rare example of Roman crucifixion
A body was found with a nail through its ankle in Cambridgeshire, England, a study published in December 2021 found.
The nail was likely used during a crucifixion, according to the study.
Though crucifixion is thought to have been a fairly common practice, physical evidence is rare. This skeleton is thought to be only the fourth-known such execution worldwide — and the best-preserved, Insider's Rebecca Cohen and Erin Schumaker reported.
A person buried 2,600 years ago in Egypt was sent off with a block of cheese.
A block of cheese was found in the ancient necropolis of Egypt's pharaohs, according to an announcement released in September.
The cheese was identified as halloumi, a squeaky goat's cheese still consumed today.
The cheese was buried between 688 and 525 BC in the Saqqara necropolis, a site that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty and pharaohs, Insider's Alia Shoaib previously reported.
King Amenhotep III was buried with two large sphinxes
An archaeological mission found two massive Sphinx statues at the site of King Amenhotep III's burial, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in January.
The statues, which are thought to have been about 26 feet long, were found half submerged in water at the "Temple of Millions of Years" in Luxor, Egypt.
King Amenhotep III ruled Egypt about 3,300 years ago when the country is thought to have been particularly wealthy for the time, Insider's Alia Shoab reported.
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