Remains of preservative substances imprinted by lines of the artery around the brain.
Imprints left by blood vessels surrounding the brain are visible inside the skull of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy.
The mummy is one of 50 discovered in 2010 at the Kom al-Ahmar/Sharuna necropolis in Egypt, but is the only one to have the detailed impressions etched into its skull. With only a few anecdotal cases seen before, this is a rare look at an Ancient Egyptian’s brain. Researchers writing in the journal Cortex have called it ‘a truly remarkable finding’. The mummification of this individual involved removing the brain and lining the inside of the braincase with preservative substances: bitumen mixed with linen. The imprints in the temporal bone exactly match those in the preservatives inside the skull, which were made by the middle meningeal artery and other vessels that covered the outer layer of the brain.
Co-author of the study Dr Albert Isidro states that if the tissue were rehydrated, it might still hold original brain cells. Usually, brain tissue is found only in naturally mummified remains, but what conditions produced these delicately preserved anatomical details remains a mystery.