A detailed medical examination of the remains of one Egyptian mummy led to a surprising and unprecedented discovery. A team of researchers from New Jersey University in the United States, Alcalá University in Spain, and the American University in Cairo found strong and convincing evidence that the person inside the mummy’s wrappings had at some point in their lives suffered a disabling brain injury and was actually a stroke victim.
“The woman who lived in ancient Egypt suffered from a stroke,” the study authors wrote, in the recently released article published in the journal World Neurosurgery . “This led her left hemisphere to paralysis, and she lived with that condition for several years.” This kind of brain injury is very familiar to doctors in modern times.
This is a remarkable conclusion, since no clear evidence of stroke-related damage has ever been found in any other ancient skeleton, from Egypt or anywhere else. A 2017 study of the skeletal remains of an 18th century Italian priest named Don Giovanni Arcangeli showed that he had had suffered a stroke before his death, and until now that was the oldest skeleton that had been identified as having belonged to a stroke victim .
