Thinking Sideways: The Persian Princess

really cool famous people. I'm gonna let you go out to the list and look for yourself, but you know you want to go, so if you use the promo code sideways, you'll get tem per cent off. So go register and we will see you in Nashville. Boys and girls, Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I'm Devin, joined as usual by Joe and Steve, and today we're going to talk about a mystery. I know

that's different from what we normally do. Yeah, well this good you know recipe we could talk about instead if you wanted cooking show. Yeah, we should be a travelogue. We should the neighborhoods of Portland. Yeah. Um, Today we're going to talk about mystery we're calling the Persian Princess. And before we get too far into what I do. Want to thank Hayden for the suggestion of this mystery

we're going to talk about. I mean, it may seem kind of boring, this Persian princess thing, but I have a fun twist ending kind of and an attempt and a like a really really bad attempt at a quick overview of the case that you may have already read because it's also our episode description. Uh. In October two thousand, of video surfaced in which a man claimed to have

the mummified remains of a Persian princess for sale. The investigation that followed revealed not only that the mummy might be a forgery, but also that there might be a murder in the mix, which is the fun twist ending there was a dead body in the middle of that. Mommy, wasn't there, Well there, Usually iscifically it works, it's usually how it works, though. Yeah, okay ready indeed okay. Uh So.

On October nineteenth, two thousand, a Pakistani man named Ali Akbar made a video showcasing a mummy in a gilded sarcophagus that he said he was selling for six million rupees, which at the time was about eleven million dollars um, which is about sixteen million dollars now, which I know is a huge difference. That's a big jump in the

seventeen short years. Yeah, and for folks who don't know sarcophagus is a fancy coffin, not everybody goes yeah, actually sometimes a sarcop guess it's see, it's like the exterior, the ex character the cofin put the coffin into. Yeah, it's the fancy thing. They put a fancy coffin. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. While this interested some people to be sure, other people thought maybe this was illegal and in violation of the antiquity laws. It's probably illegal amount how you cut it.

It's either fraud which is illegal, or let's you know, valuable artifact which is also illegal. Yeah. Either way, the police decided that it was a good idea to go question ak Bar. When they did, he said he wasn't in actual physical possession. Instead, he was acting as like a go between, a middleman. When the police did actually go to question him, they he said that he wasn't actually in physical possession of the mummy and sarcophagus and coffin and all that stuff. Instead it was kept at

the house of a tribal leader. Yeah, thank you, thank you. I want to do that on your own. I don't. I just want to keep going. Um. I you know, I'm really good at pronouncing something. Then I looked up a lot of stuff, and then now I'm realizing I didn't look all of it up. So sorry everyone, But this this tribal leader lived kind of near the border of Afghanistan. So police police go to question Riki and he tells them the mommy was a gift. Of course

it was, yeah, he said. The man he had gotten it from was an Iranian who said that he had found it after an earthquake in or near Quarta, Kta. Both Akbar and Riki were charged with violations of the antiquity rules and were sentenced to ten years in jail. And that's pretty much the end of their involvement in the story, kind of mostly mostly by name. At least a week later, the mummy was making waves and an archaeologist Ahma Hassan Danni of Islami's Bods Quite Isam University.

I'm so sorry from not not even language, sorry sorry sorry, um said that the mummy seemed to be a princess, probably from about six D B C E, which is BC for Christ for Common era if we're in use sciency terms. The mummy was wrapped in an ancient Egyptian style and rested in a gilded wooden coffin with cuneiform carvings inside of a stone sarcophagus. Cuniform, well maybe kind of Cuniform is one of the earliest systems of writing,

for those of you who don't know. It was invented by the Sumerians, and they basically they made it with this. They had these little blunt wedge reads. They were basically like little triangles at the end split a read into quarters and then you would just push it in in

a different sets of you know, shapes, um. But they were all this like weird little trianglie people people have probably people who don't know what this is has probably actually seen it in movies because it's it's always like two or three arrows at a time pointing in a direction and they kind of rotate around, like it'll be three in a row, three stacked on top of each other,

and then you rotate. But people have seen it in a lot of Hollywood stuff, and what you're describing as an arrow I would describe as a triangle right arrowhead, Yeah, triangle kind it's difference, but people Hollywood use it to make it look things look old. Yeah, for a more body reference. If you remember the Predator movies, that's you know, like Predator, Predator versus Alien. Yeah, yeah, that's what the that's the kind of writing the Predator did, kind of. Yeah,

it's kind of writing. Um, well, cuniform, so the ancient aliens, well they probably gave it to us, dude. Yeah, so cuneiform itself actually just means wedge shape, so it is that kind of wedge triangle shaped anyway. Anyway, that was a little thing. The wooden coffin had a far of our carved in it, which kind of looks like a

guy in the middle of a giant wingspan. It looks super objected, right, kind of if there's a guy standing in the middle of like just imagine a giant Egyptian wingspan, like you know what I'm talking about, but instead of like a head of an animal or something, it's just a guy standing there, normal human, yeah, facing sideways. This was a symbol of Zoroastrianism, which is a pre Islamic Persian religion. You sometimes see it in Iran still, but

it's not really religious anymore. It's been taken over by a secular meaning. It's kind of more of just a national symbol. Yeah, more of like amah. Yeah. As mentioned, there was a gold chest plate that was written in cuneiform um. She had a gold crown and mask on her face. The mummy there was also a chest like there was a weird leaf pattern almost that was also in gold that was on kind of her chest area as well, which you don't see referenced a lot, but

you can see in the pictures Pricey little mommy. Yeah. Yeah. The body was laid on a mat that was covered in honey and wax, which is kind of typical of mummies. The inscription was translated to say that she was the basically unknown daughter of kings zerk sees the first of persia U named Duguna, and she was a member of the Acameded dynasty. Actually, like basically verbatim, it read, I am the daughter of the great King zerk sees U.

Mazerika protects me. I am Reduguna. I am so one thing I want to point out about this mommy, because people I immediately did not understand what she looked like. I had a preconceived notion based on stuff that I see on TV. It's not the dry wrapped mummy like she's encased in the resin, the resin, in the honey, in the wax, like she is fully inside of this stuff. It's not your typical dry mummy that stands up and walks around on Halloween kind of look, right, And that's

really what mummies were like. And then once you get through that, then you do get to that drier kind of wrapping, although it's you know, soaked in resonant shell off, but essentially they're kind of like cast in resin or something right there, like a paper weight, yeah, kind of, yeah, actually, and then they push the and that's kind of how

they keep the gold. I'm sorry, I'm trying to really her not to cover my face as I'm talking about the mask, but the gold crown in the mask is kind of you know, it's slay on top of her, and then there's resin poured on top of that, so it stays in place, sealed in. Yeah, it's all kind of sealed in, baked in maybe I think sealed. I think this kind of resin is not like aering resin. I think it's just kind of you know, yeah, I've never I've never dealt with it like honey, you know

how honey just sticky. Oh, and that it kind of heartens after a while. Yeah, you know, there's probably some like, you know, some sort of new age funeral home here in town that actually does modifications, So we should probably call them. If there isn't. The millennials will make it happen. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, I like artisanal mommification or something like that. I'm sure there's gonna be a little place opening up very soon here in town. Yeah, that's an

interesting pronuncia. That's a different way than Yeah, it sounds it sounds more artisanal. Yeah, I pulled the word up suddenly. It had no time to prepare myself for pronuncia fair enough. Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess I can, because you've gotten everything else right so for me. Yeah. So okay, So this whole inscription thing kind of puzzled archaeologists. Actually, the whole thing puzzled archaeologists, And this is why this was such a big deal as well. So it's like puzzling in

a huge deal because she was found in Persia. But as far as anybody knew was son of Darius, Persians, he was a Persian, he was Persian. Yeah, right, so the it's all Persian, this Persian that, um. But the reason, yeah, I guess that's probably worth bringing up. The reason that this was so startling and so big was, as far as anybody knew at that time, mummification was really just

only practiced by Egyptians. In Egypt. They thought maybe she was had married a Persian prince and she was Egyptian and that they had sent you know, honored her tradition or something well, or that when she was married off that they had sent you know, there was there was some knowledge of this sort of when an Egyptian, well that they would know that they would send also like you know, they would send the Egyptian scholars and they

would send you know, jewelry and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly, party they're in there for they would retain the knowledge, right, And so then there was well they wouldn't there were people who were who only did momification, but that they would have maybe sent a couple of them as as well, so that when she did die, she could be you know, buried in the proper way her body could be prepared for the afterlife in the appropriate way. Makes sense that she was a princess. The rest of us we get

thrown into a hole that. Yeah, got a special team that's just like all on that one issue. Yeah, true,

Princess one is down wrap stacked. Yeah, I mean really yeah, because I mean, like I said, it's not as though it just anybody knew how to mummify a body, right, I mean, well, we could probably figure it out the internet, right, But you know, in those times, particularly if she was Persian, meant either that she had come from Egypt and some people had come from Egypt to take care of her body when she died, or the Persians actually had a

history of momification that nobody knew about before, and this was like a huge breakthrough an understanding. Yeah. I don't think. I don't think as like a lot of these ancient ancient Persian reality, I don't think they found their tombs, have they. I don't think so. Yeah, I think they're all that. So you know, it could be that they were all busy mommifying themselves and then we just don't know, We just don't know. We haven't found them yet Yeah,

so that was a big deal. And actually that of course means that, um, a couple other people said no, actually, you know what, I think we own the rights to that mummy, uh, the Persian princess. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yes, So where it was, you know, that particular patch of real estate is close to Iran, Afghanistan and in Pakistan, so it's like, well, you know, probably that piece of real estate has been part of those all three of those countries at some point. Yeah, so Iran, Pakistan, and

actually the Taliban. Yeah, they all made claims that they were actually the rightful owners of this mummy. Eventually Pakistan one out and they placed the Persian Princess as Princess Juguna in the National Museum of Pakistan on display as a cultural heritage thing. Whoops. There, I'm kind of curious about what the Taliban wanted to do with the mommy, because remember they're not they're not there, they're not too keen on. But we'll talk about that later, you think, okay, yeah,

we'll talk about it later. Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, so you may have heard us go whoops, um, why why whoops? Well, so it turns out during this whole hullabaloo. An American archaeologist named Oscar White Muscarella, who is an expert in Persian antiquities, came forward. He said that he had actually also been approached about a year prior by a different middleman in two thousand, right, so right as the discovery

of this thing was kind of being made public. I think the guy sent him, like some polaroids he sent, Yeah, he sent some polaroids, and he said he immediately had some doubts about the mummies authenticity, mostly tied up to where the money was found, and also the translation of the breastplate. He said that, um, it seemed kind of familiar,

and it was taken like almost word for word. Maybe there's this like this is where the reporting gets a little weird, because I've seen this statement where he says it was taken word from word from this other thing, and then I've seen other statements that say, actually it was made by Pete somebody who was totally illiterate in the Persian language, and it's like riddled with mistakes. So I'm not really totally sure, but there was something really

off about the chest plate. It might have been taken from this pretty famous inscription called the Bastian inscription, which is probably not how you pronounce that word, which is a multi lingual inscription that can can serve as kind of a Rosetta stone, but for cuneiform instead of hieroglyphics. It's three different languages all in Cuneiform. It's Old Persian, Emilet, and Babylonian. The original carving of that inscription is pretty big. It's like fifty ft high by eighty two ft wide,

which is fifteen meters and respectively. And it was like a hundred or three hundred and twenty feet off the ground, which is a hundreds meant to be read from far away apparently. Yeah, well it's big. It's like it's a billboard. It's like first billboard. It is like the Hollywood sign. It is. Yeah, absolutely is. And actually what the story is is that it was it was carved during the reign of Darius, who deserved seed One's father, so would

have I guess been the grandfather of Um Reduguna the Persian. Uh. It's a World Heritage site. Yeah, so it's a World Heritage site, et cetera. Um. Anyway, the American archaeologists said that he didn't think the mummy was more than a

hundred years old and it was probably like modern. So the dealer, being kind of a smart alec, was like, okay, sure, yeah, I'll send you part of the often, just like a little sliver of the wood from the coffin, and then you can carbon date that and that will prove that this is authentic, and then um, and I can face sucker well or you know, then you'll obviously be interested in buying it because it's this like huge antiquity, even though again it's kind of like it's super illegal and

you would think an archaeologist would know that, but whatever, you're not supposed to be like carving a chunk out the coffin. Yeah. So um, he did send a small piece of the coffin and it did get carbon dated. The carbon dating came back on the coffin and that was about two and fifty years old in reality. The dealer's representative counter argued that that could hardly be considered modern. So so he should still be interested in buying this antiquity, right, yeah,

um so. Muscarella, who by now was almost certain that this whole mummy thing was a total forgery, alerted the FBI and clearly they did not take any action on that, and they don't care. Yeah, and I mean I will say, you know again, as we know, carbon dating really only says that's when the tree was cut down. So for all you know, the coffin could have been made made more recently than they could have been like you know, salvage would maybe they know, somebody tore a barn down.

It's it's totally possible. Yeah, even later. Um Ahmed Donnie, who was the director of the Institute of Asian Civilizations in Islama's Islamabad at the time, I inspected the mummy because he was also kind of suspicious of his mummy. Again. You know, I think a lot of people were like, this is really cool discovery. We're learning new things about ancient civilizations. But at the same time, a lot of people were super suspicious of it because people fake stuff

all the time. It turns out actually that this was a big thing. Was faking mummy. Oh yeah, big sport back hundred years ago. Yeah, which is kind of sad. You know, I must be disappointing to come across this. I mean there's so many initial initial excitement and then bam, you know, all gets taken away. Yeah, but so when the mummy itself was examined, it seemed like the body

was much younger than even the coffin surrounding it. He noticed that the matt below the body, it's kind of like it's like up the walls of the coffin and then below the body. Um, it's kind of like a protective thing. Was really seems to only be about five years old still at a Walmart tag. Yeah exactly, um Ke, alerted Awesoma Ibraheim, who was the curator at that National

Museum in Pakistan where the mummy was being displayed. Ibraheim took a closer look at the mummy on display and did find that the inscription was maybe not an exact copy that we had thought before. Like I said, this is where they realized there were a ton of grammatical errors in the cuneiform inscription. Yeah, so, like I said, I had like a bunch of grammatic errors. It's somebody looked at a picture of it and thought, oh, yeah, I can do that, probably from a movie. Yeah, you know.

Another another funny thing about it is and they took a close look at at the carvings that were in the coffin. They noticed that somebody had had actually made guide marks with a lead pencil, yeah, prior to the carving, and they forgot to erase them or whatever remove them after it was all done. Yeah. So um, anyway, that's

it seems like maybe that was not maybe it's not real. Um. And the final kind of nail in the proverbial coffin was that it actually turned out that the name that was being used was a wrong version of the name um Dugana. It turns out, is actually the Greek form of the Persian name. It's a slightly different spelling, which the pronunciation is the same. So I'm not going to try to relay. But Reduguna is spelled r h oh, and then the actual Persian version of it is spelled

w a R. So obviously that's not right. Somebody really didn't do his research here. Yeah. Ibraheim spent some time investigating the body, including having an X ray and CT scanned in April of two thousand one and stated that actually it was not a mummy at all. Done done, done well. I mean it's in a sense it was a mommy, it just wasn't I guess, you know, a dead body was wrapped up in a mummy is sort of way. So I guess it was kind of a mommy kind of Yeah, just an ancient No, not really

that old at all. Yeah, So we're going to do a thing where we like leave you hanging for a second, and then we're going to talk about theories. But first let's take a break. Bow wow bow wow wow bow wow wow. Yippi yow wow wow yippi yo yippy ya. What did I just say? Well, if you speak d O double G, then you know that I said something super exciting and soon you'll be chasing the mail carrier down the street in a happy way, not that angry

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month plan. That's bark box dot com slash sideways for free extra month only when you subscribe to the six or twelve months plan to go visit bark box because this snoop, ain't lion Cliffhanger over theories ready, Alright, theory number one, it's real. She really was a Persian princess, Yeah, daughter of Xerxes. This was real, the mommy. Yeah, although that kind of if she wasn't indeed the daughter of Xerxes, and that kind of that kind of dashes the whole

she was an Egyptian princess who married a Persian prince. Yeah, I agree, kind of dashes that whole thing. It does. Yeah, but again I know, maybe maybe the ancient purchase did do them up momification. Yeah, and that would explain some stuff we're going to talk about in a little bit. But overall, yeah, overall, this is not really a theory at all. Yeah. Not, well, it is just not a

good one. Yeah. So the next theory, the next theory is when we're gonna do a bunch of sub theories on and that is that that it was a woman who was murdered, but not a princess. So basically, how was the body acquired revolving around? Yeah, pretty much, I mean I guess this, I guess really what this like overarching theory should be is that it was a fraud mummy and that the body that was in there was the body of a murder victim of some kind. Yeah,

just how exactly did it happen? Yeah, so you might have noticed that I was holding back some information. We did a little cliffhangers just a couple of minutes ago, probably less than a couple of minutes ago, after editing. But that's okay, let's just talk about the CT scans. We talked about that a minute. A minute ago. We said that Ibrahim had a X rays and seas tea scans done of the body of the mummy. So they

found some stuff. Surprised It turns out that the mummy, the body was actually the body of a woman who had probably died in Yeah. They were able to carbonate the teeth or something like that. Yeah, not so ancient after all. It turns out she had been really small, about four seven four seven inches, which I didn't bother to translate into meters or whatever it is that you guys use so they can look it up. But but yeah, but but but that is very small, but probably for

ancient times, probably not remarkable for ancient times. No, but it's pretty small. They also decided that they were able to see that the body was of a woman who was no older than twenty one. But they do refer to her as a woman. I've never seen it referred to as a girl or a teen or even a young woman. Um, but she was a young woman, so I'm going to make the presumption that she was older than eighteen UM. But so she was a young young

woman who was very small. Her skin and hair had been bleached, and they had been treated with things like bicarbonate of soda and sodium chloride, which are both drying agents and worth noting their modern drying agents they back in the day. They stuffed her body full of that stuff to suck all of the moisture out. They did. Actually, the autopsy found that she had died from blunt force trauma of the spine, but it was really hard to

tell if it was intentional or accidental. They likened it to kind of what it would look like if you'd been hit by a car and died um from a spinal injury. So I guess by definition she was murdered technically run over by a car or something like that. Lots of murder. I mean, getting run over by a car intentional or not is still technically murder. Well, you know, if you do the right thing and call the police and follow an accident report, I guess it's an accident.

But if you just grabbed the body and mommify it, maybe that's kind of more murdering. Yeah, I mean I would say, like even an accidental murder is a murder of a kind, right, Yeah, sort of, that's technically a murder, it's just a really accidental kind of I mean, you know. The other option here is that she might have like fallen just right on a fence or something like that, but that seems really unlikely to me. So first sub theory is that she could have been murdered for her organs.

That's a thing that happens sometimes, not not frequently, I don't think, but sometimes you listen to the internet, it happens all the time, constantly in bathtubs filled with ice. Yeah, yeah, with a weird side pain. Uh. Did I forget to mention that all of her organs were missing, by the way, because they were all of them. I didn't forget. I intentionally didn't. I did here, right, Sorry, it was being coy.

It's fine. This could have been the case of somebody killing her for her organs, you know, a blunt forced trauma to the spine, could have been intentional or not. Again, but they could have thought, oh, let's take all of her organs, because even her heart was missing, and this was a this was a mistake maybe on the part of the people who were doing it, or was or it was all of her organs were being taken to be sold on the black market. Body for mama Mama, yeah,

because well yeah, Gyptians left the heart in. But one thing that people kind of thought was that it's possible that her body had been grave robbed and that's how somebody came about her body versus, you know, murdered for necessarily the forgery or anything like that. So it's possible she was murdered for her organs. They were all removed and then she was buried, and then later she had the additional misfortune of being dug up and made into a mummy or and I don't know how much this happens.

I mean, you can be an Oregon downer over here in America. I assume they have similar things in other countries, and so maybe she had died of some some cause or another in her organs were harvested for, you know, to be given to other people, and then they sent her off to the morgue where she was more robbed instead of grave robbed. I mean, her body could have been nabbed all kinds of places. True, It's it's certainly

possible that that could have happened. I don't think they usually take all the organs, like they wouldn't take her intestines, for instance, right, Like that would be that would have been a thing they would have left in there, because like I don't think, I don't think, I don't I don't have never heard of an intestinal transplant that I haven't either. Seemed like that would be kind of seems like maybe not a right How do you get them packed in there just right? I'm sure there are some

doctors you know. Well. The weird thing about taking the organs for harvest or not, as well as the whole packing or full of drying agents, you have to do that stuff almost immediately. I mean, if they are really taking the organs to sell, then they definitely would have had to kill this person to take them right away. While the brand new fresh in the package, still working. You gotta if you don't kill them, you're gonna be at least Johnny on the spot exactly. And the same

thing with the with the drying agents. In order to get the drying agents in there and get the body to actually start, you know, losing all that moisture before it starts to decay and rot and every other things to set in that speed that process along, you also have to be there like immediately. There's not there's a

very small window for that stuff to happen. So, and I'm not clear on the type of spine injury she had that killed her, it is I guess it is possible, just totally speculating here, that she could have had one of those like brain dead spine injuries and that's why she And so that would mean that somebody could have harvested all of her organs if she was in a hospital, if she well, if she were in a hospital, or if your brain did your body No, I I know

your body isn't functioning. I understand the brain runs the body. I'm not a total but no, but that you know, if they had hit her just right and they realized, like I don't know, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, if you were in the hospital or some other thing. I don't really know how the organ harvesting black market works so relatively efficiently according to the Internet, you got a

one or two. Though, it looks to me like she probably from the injuries I've heard described, and I've heard variations from broken pelvis to broken neck all the way up the whole game, it sounds something like she probably was in something like a car wreck. Yeah. I think she was probably hit by a car, like a pedestrian hit by probably from behind, looks like, so you do have to wonder how many of her organs were actually

good enough shape after something like that. And that's why I yeah, and that's why I bring this one up first, because, as you guys know, I like to go like dumbest to best. So I would say, this is a low probability that she was killed for her organs, but it's still probably a possibility. I guess that's a theory. Yeah, we kind of went on the grave robbing thing again. But yeah, sorry, let's let's hop to the next area.

In the next area that that she, you know, maybe got hit by a car totally accidentally died was buried and then at a later date was grave robbed and they took all of her organs out for the forgery. The problem with this, of course, is, um, we just said, yeah, basically all the things we just said, you know, the drying agents would have had to have been applied like way earlier than you know, she would have showed more signs of decomposition things like that. Um, this was the

most prevalent theory from the investigators. They thought that basically the reason that this is like their ideal theory is because we'll talk about at the end here the really really sad part of this whole story. But the investigators once once they found out that it wasn't a real mummy, just kind of didn't care anymore. So this theory, Yeah, no, it wasn't obviously as high profile, but it's a'm sture. They still looked into it as a murder mystery, but

probably not tis not really that much. It sounds like, so this was an ideal theory for them, right, because it meant they didn't have to really deal with a murder, right, they didn't really have to find a Jane Doe murder that had been killed for this, like huge foragery. They could just say, listen, we got the people who were who had you know, done this, and they're in jail for ten years because of the antiquities laws, and that's

probably good enough. And they just robbed a grave and you know, they did the forgery and that's awful, but they didn't really kill anyone. They weren't really hurting anyone. They didn't really get away with it. So they're spending time in jail and everything's fine. So this is obviously an ideal theory for them because they didn't really have to do anything. But you know, obviously they could have done something, because that's that's where the trail leads back,

is to who actually killed this person. Is these people got got the body from somebody somebody and obviously the police that they probably bribed the police to just say dude, you know, don't make us, don't make us rad our friends up, we'll get killed or something like that, you know. But but obviously they could have tracked it back that way. Yeah, we one would think they could have, but it seems

like they didn't really care. Yeah. Well, and I wonder I wonder that the level of difficulty to track it back because based on how gosh I forgot the name of the guy, the American who first saw and figured out it was a forgery, Oscar. Yeah, there was. There was at least six months, if not almost a year between when he saw the tape and when the next

people got ahold of it. So that means this body, this was I think the same it was the same seller, But I'm talking about the time frame between when he saw the film and whoever report you know got them in trouble saw the film. Yeah, so this body has been floating around, this mummy has been floating around in their possession for a while. So that makes the trail even colder, because you know, there's more and more time.

People are coming and go, and I can I'm not defending them, but I can see all that would make it so much harder when it's not brand new fresh blood on the ground. Yeah, I'm just I'm just presuming that fakes like this, especially ones that are considered to be like high level fakes, not just a regular mommy,

but a princess. You know, somebody, somebody invested some time and then found themselves a buyer and it was so this thing actually might have originally been and that might be part of the reason it was so crudely done,

like with the translations and stuff like that. It might have just been meant to be sold to some rich dude as a memento, like you know, as you know, it could have been the tribal guy, and it could have been never intended to actually fool anybody at the level of a museum of antiquities level, you know what I'm saying. And so that guy had it and then either decided he needed to cash more or whatever, so

he sold it. And so I don't think anybody like bought somebody like in a in a bazaar or something like that where they didn't know who it was even with time going by. It's actually a really good segue into our next theory. So let's do that, and then I know, you guys have a lot you want to talk about with this theory, which is why I saved it for last, and it's the most likely one. I think.

It could be that somebody killed her for the forgery. Um, you know, she literally fit the bill, she I mean, yeah, actually, unfortunately, you know, she was small and people from that time we're small, and you know, it could be that she was, you know, maybe somebody who was experiencing homelessness, maybe somebody who was a sex worker, maybe somebody who they just knew what some you know, somebody that they knew, you know, sadly, probably wouldn't be missed. And also you gotta find somebody

who hasn't had any dental work done. You can't have any model of modern dental work things like that. Yeah, so I think they probably just found the right you know, in my mind, the way this goes as somebody found the confidence sarcophagus, which was a forgery in and of itself, right, but somebody found this older forgery and was like, oh yeah, we could we could fill that. Oh yeah, you know what. Actually, you know that one lady that we see all the

time who's super short, she would fit the bill. We could do this. We and then they just hit her with a car, kills her. And then they or something or you know something, they hit her with something killer, you know, find they remove all her organs, wrongly, remove all her organs because again Egyptian mummies not traditionally dry her out, make a new map for the coffin, deal with the resident, put the gold on her face and you know put the chest plate. I mean, it's not insane.

I mean it is insane, right, it's that's that is insane. But it's not a crazy theory, No, not at all. I mean, actually, mummy forgeries are really common. And back like two years ago and the early nineteenth century, there was this thing called mummy mania. Have you heard of?

Mummy Mania overtook Europe after after after Egypt. Egypt was opened up and suddenly lots of Europeans were traveling to Egypt, and all these rich Europeans were buying mummies to bring home and put it on display at the family of state, show off to their friends and stuff. And I'm sure just about all of them were forgeries. Well this is and this is why antiquities laws exist now too. I mean,

should you be buying an authentic one to take home? No, I mean the black market for antiquities, whether they're forged or not. The black market is worth so much to the tune of billions of dollars a year, which you can understand why that would be so enticing to a couple of Yahoo's who finds something and realized that they could spin it from a low level thing to a higher low value to a higher value object. Sixteen million

dollars is a lot of money. I'm talking about when they found just a coffin and oh hey, if we can stuff a body in that thing, now it's worth even more. But I agree with Joe that I think that they you really have to have some seriously big cojones and skill to think that you can fool somebody in a museum. Well, what I think kind of mostly man, I sort of tested. I think what kind of happened is somebody just meant it to fool some rich dude.

It didn't really know anything, yeah, and it was plenty authentic enough looking for that, and then this rich dude, for whatever reason, decided, hey, this is this is such a perfect copy. I could probably fool somebody else and make myself like ten million bucks or or said rich dude you know, thinks it's actually, you know, actually real worth a lot of money and finds himself well and finds himself like, you know what, Actually I really want

to boat? Yeah, i'd want that panther yacht. What do I have that I could sell that I don't really care about? Oh yeah, I have that money in the basement. I'll sell that. Yeah, I'd get kind of tired of that anyway. It's hard to keep it clean. Yeah, it's been just collecting that a scratching post. Yeah, I mean I almost also wonder if what happened is they found the coffin the sarcophagus that they could I don't as far as I know, they never dated the chest plate

and all the other goal the couchmans. It's possible, in my mind they found a really old forgery that had not the mummy itself had not withstood the test of time, right, and so they find all this stuff and for all they know, it's authentic, except for the mummy looks bad. They don't know. They're not the dummies who did like a weird your dumb translation on the chest. They don't know anything. Yeah, right, I mean, they don't know anything.

They're just like, we just need a body to fill this, and then we've got ourselves an authentic mummy in a coffin in a sarcophagus that we can solve her a ton of money. They might not even they might have, honestly, honest to God, thought that everything else about it was authentic, except because that's I mean the coffin comes from that time when Mummy Fever was happening. Yeah, when all these

fortunes were going around. Yeah, and which would explained why the guy sent over the sliver of the coffin, like, go ahead and Carmen this. I mean, he could really could have just thought they could have been so dumb. I mean, frankly, if I found something like that, I would think it was real, Like, I don't know any better.

I think this guy. It might be that the guy that actually owned it and picked himself a really stupid agent to marketing, probably intended for him to go find himself a private collector to pay big money for this, and as Bozo starts showing it a out to actually well connected people who and it actually got publicized and gave to the attention to the authorities and stuff, and so he probably just googled like Persian antique collectors, and like a bunch of educated people came up and he

was like, cool, these are the collectors I'll reach out to that I just did a Google. Yeah, it could be alright. I guess at that point it was probably like an ask Jeeves or something, because that's a good point. Yeah, I find it really funny that the Taliban in the beginning, we're trying to flex their muscle to say that they owned it because they were they Well what I find so ironic about that is you know that they're pretending that they're trying to protect a national treasure, but no,

the biggest bandits they are. They've been selling off so much history for so long in that part of the world, and to fund their operations and also destroying it. You know, they had they sort of hued this idea that nothing predates are wonderful Islamic Republicans, so like you know, like remember those those giant, those giant ancient Buddhas up in

the middle that they destroyed. Yeah, yeah, Well big part of this is if you have been paying attention, you know, uh, there's a gold crown, there's a gold mask, there's a gold chest plate, there's another gold weird chess plate thing that's there's money there, there's a lot of money. Yeah, people who did the forgeries were domin enough to just do something that was plated. I assume that you solid gold, I was what do you think about it? Is it

kind of an investment? It is, But if you're going to sell it for you know, sixty what is now sixty million dollars, it's still still worthwhile. Yeah, but I really I do kind of think it was. You know, they didn't actually do any of the forgery except for the body in my mind. You know, it's it's hard to say. I just I just know how much of that that part of the world is being dug up

constantly and sold off. Have you reading those articles about how they're using satellite technology and their their time standing, the overlaying images from different times to then be able to tell where and when people are digging stuff. Yeah, they're doing it illegally, yeah, constantly, but like entire grave ancient graveyards are being looted from the sky. They're like, oh look it's it looks like the side of a

golf ball. You just just pock marksist divin did. Did just guys out there just this so sad, you know, But yeah, there there was there was some really fun If you guys want to hear stories of other fake fun mummy stories, Yeah, Like the most recent one was fifty in the Vatican finally decided to check on do a little research on their comummies, and they had two of them that were basically child sized. One that turned out to be complete fakes, and they've had them for

a long time, Like how complete faikes? Like just newer they had no human body, had animal bones. Well. There was just another famous case was in New Jersey. This this is like in the on display at like the Hack and Sack Library that have been donated like in the nineteen twenties or something into the city and it had been on display and then suddenly and after about three decades, it was discovered that it was all just rags.

I mean it was just like you know, my mommy, just rags, all shaped to look like a human body, all wrapped in Yeah, like like when you were a kid and you make the pillows under your blankets, so that looked like the shape of you sleeping kind of yeah. Yeah. And there was another famous one that was like a huge attraction in Mississippi was like I'm displayed at the Mississippi State Capital from like the nineteen twenties to nineteen

sixty nine. I think when they finally took a closer look at it and then did some X rays and discovered that what they thought was a body inside it was just like paper mache and a wooden frame held together with nails. Rapp, I have a new venture for yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is what we're gonna do from now on. Uh So, just one final thing before we end this story. Uh

and it's just really sad to me. It's it's worth noting that, um, a few people in the agency's investing the whole discovery of the mummy got these really big promotions based on the discovery and returned to the rifle owners. These are all air quotes. I'm doing whild Air quoting in here. But once it was exposed as a murder and forgery, they kept their promotions and also weren't really asked to investigate the origins of the murdered woman. Yeah.

I mean, basically, people really only cared about this case when it was a fancy princess mummy. And on one hand, I understand, But on the other hand, it's kind of like there was a Jane Doe murder out there, Like some woman was murdered. It's kind of like Princess who died in a car wreck. Other other women of similar age and worthiness get killed in car wrecks all the time. Does anybody know or care no, no, yeah, it's it's

really sad to me. Um. But since the coffin and mummy were removed from the National Museum because of course they her um like that, it was taken to the Eddie Trust, which is now the Eddie Foundation, and it was stored for investigation for eight years, during which time not a single investigator came to look at it. Of course, like they did, they had to keep it in the more for eight years. It took up but it was

like sarcophagus. Coffin and body took up the space of two bodies basically, and the whole the cost of them storing it was like seven dollars a day, which doesn't seem like a lot of money until you consider that by the time that they finally got around to being able to bury her, they had spent almost twenty three thousand dollars on storing eight And that's that's why you shouldn't go have one or two Starbucks a day, because that's how much money you're going to spend in a

couple of years. It add up, and by the way, in that part of the world, that's probably more than most people making their entire lives. Yeah, it's a lot of money, um so. And actually what happened is the Eddie Foundation kept saying to the investigators, like, we have this body, are you, like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Like, it's really expensive for us to to store this body, and we're happy to do it as long as you're working towards finding out who she is.

And they kept saying, oh, yeah, yeah, we're working. And so finally they said, um, all right, listen, we're going to bury the body in four days unless you tell us not to. And the investigators just never responded. So they finally in two thousand nine buried the body coffin Sarcopticus, everything in a kind of unmarked grave plot. And to me, that's really the saddest part of this mystery is that, yeah, woman was murdered, probably just burying it so somebody else

doesn't dig it up and put it back on the market. Yeah, I mean that might be part of it too, but I mean, realistically, that's the saddest part to me is that, like, a woman was murdered and we have no idea who she was, or not even necessarily murdered. She might have just died accidentally, but still she should have a marked grave, you know, or we should know, should know what happened, right, Yeah, sure, anyway, that's the down ending of this kind of otherwise fun

Mrs let thanks a lot. Good thing we don't release these on Mondays. We'd screw people's entire weekend. I know. Yeah, Thursdays are bad enough, rolls right into Friday and it's Friday. Maybe we should just not be releasing them anywhere. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's talk about that later. Okay, we're kidding, guys. Don't worry. Please don't write with angry emails,

are we anyway? Um? Yeah, So if you want to see some of the links to some of the research, um, you know, hopefully you've already taken time to look up pictures of what this mommy looks like because it's kind of hard to describe if any of that stuff. You can also find links to our merch sites or episode lists to find every single episode we've ever done. I think Steve told me before we started recording that we're

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I know already. Um, if you have any any just anything you want to say to us, um, feel free to send us an email. That email Dress is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And I think that is everything that I need to tell you. I think it's all the stuff that you guys skip. There we go. Yeah, okay, another mystery solved. Yeah, sadly, let's talk about another princess. Talk about Disney princesses. Yeah, we can talk about Disney princess talk about princess cruises. Okay, oh yeah, when we

talk about Disney princess cruises, perfect. Okay, what do you guys want to talk about first,