#Archaeology # Modern scientific and technological means are very developed, some people have moved their minds, the use of modern technology to forge ancient cultural relics, illegal money, this is not only in our country there is this phenomenon, in the world is also often appeared, such as the so-called Mayan "crystal skull", has been proved to be modern crafts. The story of cultural relics counterfeiting that I want to share with you today is: the ancient Persian princess mummification case found in Pakistan.
Fake Persian princess mummy
In 2000, Pakistani authorities received intelligence claiming that someone was selling a very important cultural relic, and after a raid, the police caught the trafficker and seized the $11 million artifact. According to interrogations, the dealer learned that it was a mummy contained in a coffin that had been found due to the earthquake.
The mummy has never been found in Pakistan, if it can be confirmed, then the mummy will undoubtedly become a national treasure of Pakistan, the police do not dare to be careless, immediately sent the coffin to the National Museum of Pakistan.
Pakistani archaeologists conduct research
The people at the National Museum of Pakistan carefully opened the coffin, and everyone could not believe their eyes: the mummy was well preserved, wrapped in resin bandages, the chest was covered with gold armor, the face was covered with gold masks, and the golden crown was worn on the head, similar to the scene when Tutankhamun's coffin was opened. Most excitingly, mysterious cuneiform script was found on top of this coffin.
The staff of the National Museum talked in a tongue-in-cheek conversation, some believing that it was a mummy sold from Egypt to Pakistan, others believing that from Iran, cuneiform script had become the key to unlocking the identity of female mummies.
The mummy is tested
Linguists were urgently invited to the scene, and after preliminary conclusions by experts, these cuneiform scripts belonged to Ancient Persian, so the mummy should be ancient Persian, but the problem is that there is no historical evidence that ancient Persians also made mummies. So, archaeologists at the scene came to a simple preliminary conclusion: the mummy was made by the ancient Persians and mummified by the Egyptians.
The news of the discovery of mummies in Pakistan shocked the world, and if true, it was an epoch-making archaeological discovery: ancient Egypt had sent their funerers to the Persian Empire, which would rewrite much of history.
Persian woman
The female director of the National Museum of Pakistan, Iplasin, is a rigorous and pragmatic expert who insists on examining all the evidence available. She managed to teach herself Ancient Persian, translating the wedge-shaped inscription carved into the coffin: I am the daughter of the great king Xerxes, Mazarika protects me, and my name is Rodhujang.
Good fellow, it turned out that this mummy was a princess of ancient Persia, but Ipuchin was looking for the princess's information and found that there was almost no record in the history books about the life of Rodhujang, and there was no date of her birth and death. However, the information of Xerxes, the king of ancient Persia, is very detailed, and Iprahim even found out that Xerxes's construction of the palace of Posepolis, the capital of ancient Persia, should be related to this mummy.
Statue of Xerxes
In historical records, Xerxes employed hundreds of stonemasons, some of whom were Egyptians, in order to carve the art stone statues in the Royal Palace of Persepolis. Inside Rodhujang's coffin, there are carvings in the shape of roses, the same as the ornamentation on the ancient Persian monuments. The mummy of Rodhujang has a crown of 7 cypress trees on his head, which is the symbol used by members of the royal family during the time of King Xerxes. The mummy's gold mask is also consistent with the gold mask in the British Museum's Gallery of Persian Art. All this seems to prove that the mummy in the coffin is indeed Rodhujon, the daughter of King Xerxes.
Xerxes statue
But to the bewilderment of Director Iprahin, there were grammatical spelling errors in the chirotypes carved into the coffin, which Iprahim studied more deeply, and a more perplexing question arose: Rodhujiong was the Greek translation of "Wardgona," and Wardgona was the real name of the daughter of the Persian king Xerxes. Xerxes had no reason to have the inscription for his daughter in Greek, because by the time of the later Greek conquest of Persia, Roduchon had died a long time ago.
Later, traces of modern pencil refills were found in the inscription marks on the coffin of "Luo Dujiong", which made people realize that this so-called "Luo Dujiong" mummy was a fake artifact forged by modern people, and when the carbon 14 measurement was carried out, it was shown that the grass mat lying in the coffin was made 50 years ago. Subsequent scientific measurements have shown that the owner of the mummy died in 1996, which means that the mummy was forged for no more than 4 years.
At this point, the National Museum of Pakistan announced to the outside world that the "Roduljang" mummy was a fake cultural relic.
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