Bone-Chilling Secret Of Mummy's "Screaming" Face Unveiled By Scientists

Researchers used CT scanning and X-ray diffraction to examine her well-preserved remains, finding her organs intact and no embalming incision.

Nearly a century later, scientists have finally been able to open up the chilling mystery of an ancient Egyptian mummy who was found with a screaming face. Nicknamed "The Screaming Woman," the remains were discovered back in 1935 in Deir Elbahari, Egypt, inside the tomb belonging to the family of a royal architect.

And what differentiated her from typical mummification, in which internal organs are removed, is that all of her organs were still inside her body, which was quite perplexing for the scientists. It was initially thought that careless mummification had left her mouth wide open by accident.

Now, however, a new scientific analysis has given a different answer. According to Sahar Saleem, a researcher from Cairo University, it is cadaveric spasm-a rare form of muscular stiffening that occurs at the moment of death in cases of violent or extremely stressful death. It means she died screaming in agony.

Saleem and her co-author, Dr Samia El-Merghani, describe in a journal article published in Frontiers in Medicine how they "virtually dissected" the mummy using computerised tomography (CT) scanning technology and X-ray diffraction analysis to examine the skin, hair, and long black wig.