First Pregnant Egyptian Mummy 'Likely Had Cancer'

Researchers believe the presence of the disease is indicated by unusual traces of bones in her skull. A pathological change in the right eye orbit was observed anthropologist and archaeologist Marzena Ozarek-Szilke - indicating nasopharyngeal cancer. Further examination is necessary to fully confirm cancer, but the observed changes in bones make it very likely. Scientists plan to take tissue samples and determine the cause of the disease. The data will then be compared with those from other cancer samples found in Egyptian mummies. The mummy was donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826 and was initially considered to be a woman. In the 1920s and 1960s, Egyptologists read hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions made for the male priest Hor-Djehuty, who lived in Thebes in the 1st century BCE. However, scientists from the Warsaw Mummy Project established that the mummy was a pregnant woman.