It's a dummy mummy: 2000-year-old Egyptian skeleton found by boy in German attic turns out to be a hoax and made out of PLASTIC

When one very excited 10-year-old claimed to have found a mummy in his grandmother's attic, it took his parents a while to realise he wasn't making it up.
But, unfortunately for little Alexander Kettler, from Diepholz, his historic find has proved to be a little less exciting than originally thought.
It turns out that the supposed 2000-year-old Egyptian mummy is actually made of plastic, a discovery made after scientists finally unwrapped the corpse for inspection.

Mysterious find: A 10-year-old German boy has found what appears to be a mummy in a sarcophagus in his grandmother's attic

Experts now claim they were fooled by a chemical spray which made the bones appear real.

 
Lutz Gaebler, a Lower Saxony prosecutor who had declared the 'mummy' was 2,000 years old, has admitted that bone X-rays have proven him wrong.

'The mummy was unwrapped, and we have seen relatively quickly that the ingredients are not ancient,' he said.
In an unexpected and slightly macabre twist, the mummy did contain a genuine skull, though an arrowhead found lodged in it appeared to come from a child's toy.

Relic: Mr Kettler believes that his father may have brought an unusual souvenir back from a trip to north Africa in the 1950s

Interest peaked the the so-called 'mummy of Diepholz' after it was found in the corner of an attic last month.
Lutz Wolfgang Kettler, father of the boy who discovered it, theorised that his own father may have bought it while travelling in the 1950s when there was still a mummy trade operating.
According to Kettler, 'unwrapping parties' - where a genuine mummy is unwrapped and the trinkets inside handed out - were not uncommon in Germany at the time.
The sarcophagus was found alongside a death mask and a canopic jar - used to store organs extracted from the deceased - but these were quickly outed as fake.
Kettler insisted on having the corpse itself tested though, intrigued at the possibility of it being real, despite some pointing out that the body was bound in 20th century cloth.
The mummification process dates back to 3,500BC with the oldest intact Egyptian mummy dating from 100 years after that.
The mummy, known simply as ID #32751, is currently held by the British Museum.
It was apparently preserved by direct contact with the dry desert sand, though it is uncertain whether the mummification was intended.
The only mystery that now remains is why somebody would store a fake mummy in their attic for four decades.

WHY DID THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS MUMMIFY PEOPLE AND ANIMALS?

Tradition: Ancient Egyptians used to mummify both humans and animals when they died

Ancient Egyptians were firm believers in the afterlife when someone died.
But they thought to get there, the body needed to be recognisable, so that the dead person could repossess it.
The chief embalmer was a priest wearing the mask of Anubis - the jackal-headed God of the dead.
First the brains would be pulled out of the person through the nose using a hook.
Then all the internal organs would removed, including the lungs, stomach, intestines and liver and placed in jars. The heart would be replaced.
The inside of the body would be rinsed with wine and spices before being covered with salt for 70 days.
After 40 days it would be stuffed with linen to give it a more humane shape.
At 70 days it would be wrapped in bandages and placed inside a brightly-painted coffin.
Mainly wealthy people were mummified because poorer people could not afford it.
Animals were also sometimes mummified as gestures to the Gods or so that they could accompany their owners in the afterlife.