In 2016, as part of Maidstone Museum’s Ancient Lives project, their mummified collections, comprised mostly of animals, were CT scanned. Shockingly, EA 493 Mummified Hawk (Ptolemaic Period, 300bce) didn’t contain a hawk, it contained a human. 

Inside of a small cartonnage, painted with a gilt hawk face and wings, but human feet in sandals, and references to Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky (show more on screen), they discovered a human male fetus mummified with his arms across his chest.

“The mummy is housed in a plaster case embellished with the face of a hawk and hieroglyphics discussing Horus, an ancient Egyptian god of kingship and the sky bearing the head of a falcon. Careful inspection reveals, however, markings that look like human sandals at the bottom end of the case.”

Andrew Nelson and Sahar Saleem among others did further testing: the fetus miscarried at around five months gestation due to severe anencephaly, in which the brain and skull did not develop. His head would not have looked human and his family may have associated him with Horus because of it.  

This baby was cherished by his family, who took extraordinary measures to have him mummified. As Andrew Nelson pointed out in his interview with Newsweek, in ancient Egypt non-royal fetuses tended to be buried in pots, below the floors of a house, etc. Of eight mummified Egyptian fetuses, this is the second with anencephaly (two of the eight are King Tut’s Daughters.)

However, the form of his casing, the hawk mummy, resembles the millions of mummified hawk cartonnages found in the tunnels of Saqqara– is it possible that there are more mummified humans interred there?

Sources:

Harris, Samantha. 2 Feb 2018. “When a hawk mummy is not a hawk mummy.” Maidstone Museum.

Hignett, Katherine. 4 June 2018. “Ancient Egypt: Misidentified Hawk Mummy Is Actually a Human Baby.” Newsweek.

Hughes, Bettany. 2021. “Egypt’s Great Mummies: Unwrapped with Bettany Hughes.” SandStone Global. Available on YouTube.

Van Brenk, Debora. 31 May 2018. “Professor unwinding story of misidentified mummy.” Western (University) News.