Persian Princess

The Persian Princess or Persian Mummy is a mummy of an alleged Persian princess that surfaced in Pakistani Baluchistan in October 2000. After huge publicity and further investigation, the mummy proved to be an archaeological forgery and possibly a murder victim.

The mummy was found October 19, 2000. Pakistani authorities were alerted to a videotape recorded by Ali Aqbar, in which he claimed to have a mummy for sale. When questioned by the police, Aqbar told them where the mummy was located; at the house of tribal leader Wali Mohammed Reeki in Kharan, Baluchistan near the border of Afghanistan. Reeki claimed he had received the mummy from an Iranian named Sharif Shah Bakhi, who had said that he had found it after an earthquake near Quetta. The mummy had been put up for sale in the black antiquities market for 600 million rupee, the equivalent of $11 million. Reeki and Aqbar were accused of violating the country's Antiquities Act, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

In a press conference on October 26, archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani of Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University announced that the mummy seemed to be a princess dated circa 600 BC. The mummy was wrapped in ancient Egyptian style, and rested in a gilded wooden coffin with cuneiform carvings inside a stone sarcophagus. The coffin had been carved with a large faravahar image. The mummy was atop a layer of wax and honey, was covered by a stone slab and had a golden crown on its brow. An inscription on the golden chest plate claimed that she was the relatively unknown Rhodugune, a daughter of king Xerxes I of Persia and a member of the Achaemenid dynasty.

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