Attic anatomy

This mystery is deepening and has become blogworthy… In August it was reported that a German 10-year-old named Alexander Kettler had discovered a mummy in the attic of his grandmother's house in Diepholz. Although it had some of the accoutrements of ancient Egypt – a hieroglyphic-adorned sarcophagus and a canopic jar – it looked very inauthentic to me, not least of which because of the positioning of the arms (IMAGE HERE). There was speculation that the boy's grandfather (who died 12 years ago) brought a replica mummy home as an exotic souvenir from his travels to North Africa in the 1950s. Alexander's father, dentist Lutz Wolfgang Kettler, had it CT-scanned and x-rayed and the results were surprising. Beneath the probably machine-made wrappings was a fairly intact human skeleton measuring 4.9' (1.49 m), though the bones may have come from more than one person. The skull was wrapped with a metal diadem or headband (IMAGE ABOVE), and had an arrowhead lodged in one of the eye sockets. The neck vertebrae were missing, but the remaining bones had been wrapped in some kind of metal foil. The mummy has now been confiscated by authorities and will be examined by forensic experts in Hamburg for possible criminal implications. "It's a somewhat uncomfortable situation," admits 53-year-old Mr. Kettler.

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