Archaeologists in Russia believe the well-preserved mummy is the body of an ancient woman.
A remarkable 2,000-year-old “sleeping beauty” skeleton has been found at a Russian reservoir in Siberia.
The well-preserved mummy, said to be that of an ancient woman, was still dressed in the silk skirt in her grave.
She reportedly also had a pouch of pine nuts on her chest ready to take to the afterlife.
A significant fall in the water level of a reservoir upstream of the giant 794ft tall Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectricity dam on the River Yenisei in south Russia led to the burial site of the woman – as old as Christ – reappearing on the shoreline.
The ancient woman was buried wearing a silk skirt ( Image: Marina Kilunovskaya/The Siberian)
“In her birch bark make-up box, she had a Chinese mirror,” reported The Siberian Times.
“During excavations the mummy of a young woman was found on the shore of the reservoir.
“The lower part of the body was especially well preserved,” said archeologist Marina Kilunovskaya, from St Petersburg’s Institute of History of Material Culture.
She continued: “his is not a classic mummy – in this case, the burial was tightly closed with a stone lid, enabling a process of natural mummification.”
A team of archaeologists worked on the shoreline for days
Remarkably, the mummification partially survived her burial plot being drowned during the Soviet era in the early 1980s.
Natalya Solovieva, the Institute of History of Material Culture’s deputy director, said: “On the mummy are what we believe to be silk clothes, a beaded belt with a jet buckle, apparently with a pattern…
“Near the head was found a round wooden box covered with birch-bark in which lay a Chinese mirror in a felt case.”
The woman was buried around 1,900 to 2,000 years ago ( Image: Marina Kilunovskaya/The Siberian)
There was a significant drop in water levels upstream of Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectricity dam ( Image: Sergey Nikonov/The Siberian Time)
Sources:mirror.co.uk
