A 5,500-year-old mystery murder could be one step closer to being solved after forensic experts found Ginger, the Egyptian mummy housed at the British Museum, was a young man stabbed in the back during peacetime. Forensic scientists have moved closer to solving a 5,500-year-old cold case crime after new technology allowed them to study fatal wounds on the body of a famous mummy.
The corpse, known officially as the Gebelein Man, has been nicknamed Ginger due to his red hair and seen by millions of visitors to the British Museum.
Experts, who used digital images and scanning technology, have now concluded he was almost certainly murdered by an assailant who caught him by surprise.
His injuries suggest he was the victim of a deliberate, violent killing during a period of peace, with his shoulder blade damaged and the rib underneath shattered in a manner consistent with a stab wound. The absence of any signs of healing and the severity of the injuries suggest that this can be considered the cause of death, a spokeswoman for the British Museum said.
Visitors to the museum can now use a touch screen on the “virtual operating table” to examine the body more closely than ever before, in an attempt to find clues about his life and death.
The body was discovered in 1896 in a shallow grave in the Egyptian sand. He is believed to have lived around 3,500 BC in an area close to the Nile and about 25 miles south of Thebes.
He is considered to be of the best-preserved mummies in the world, after the heat and sand combined to keep his body largely in tact.
It is not known whether Ginger’s murderer was ever caught.
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