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After virtually unwrapping the mummified body of a young girl who died 2000 years ago, archaeologists have found something unique: an ancient Egyptian bandaged wound.

The ancient Egyptians were no strangers to linen bandages, which they , about a thousand years before the first pharaohs rose to power. But until now, Egyptologists haven鈥檛 found bandages that were used to dress the wounds of living ancient Egyptians.

As part of a study investigating skin infections in ancient Egyptian children, at the Institute for Mummy Studies in 聽Bolzano, Italy, and his colleagues looked at the mummy of a girl who was between 2.5 and 4 years old when she died, and whose remains are now housed in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, Germany.

It is no longer considered good practice to physically unwrap ancient Egyptian mummies, both for ethical reasons and because doing so destroys the elaborate linen bandaging around the body. Instead, the team used a CT scanner to look inside the mummy.

Doing so revealed a bandage-like structure around her left leg, just above the ankle. After carefully analysing the CT scans, the researchers concluded that the structure was a dressing that had been placed over a puss-filled wound shortly before the girl died.

鈥淭he evidence for the wound dressing is very strong as there are clear signs of an underlying infection,鈥� says Zink.

It isn鈥檛 clear whether the wound contributed to the girl鈥檚 death 鈥� or, for that matter, why the embalmers opted to leave the wound dressing in place during the mummification process. The fact that they did, however, means the dressing was inadvertently preserved.

鈥淭here should be much more evidence for wound dressings in Egyptian mummies, but this is the first that was described,鈥� says Zink.

Such a discovery was to be expected eventually because ancient Egypt is such a focus of research, says at the Al Maarefa University in Saudi Arabia. He says the ancient Egyptians had a . 鈥淭hey could diagnose and treat several diseases successfully,鈥� says Ghoneim 鈥� although he says the line between medicine and magic wasn鈥檛 always clear cut.

The mummy dates from the very end of ancient Egyptian history, after the region had become a province of the Roman Empire. But a offers written evidence that the ancient Egyptians used bandages to dress wounds far earlier in the civilisation鈥檚 history.

鈥淪plints, dressings and bandaging are referred to [in the Edwin Smith Papyrus],鈥� says at the University of Manchester, UK. He agrees with Zink that physical evidence of such dressings has been lacking. But that is probably because the evidence has perished rather than because the ancient Egyptians were unaware of the value of bandaging wounds.

鈥淭he ancient Egyptians were expert bandagers as attested by the complexity and quality of the bandaging seen in some mummies,鈥� says Forshaw.

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