Uncover the Secrets of Lady Rai: The Oldest Mummy in Egypt, Handmaiden to Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, the First Queen of the 18th Dynasty, and Her Mysterious Life.

The mummy of Lady Rai is one of the oldest mummies discovered in Egypt. She was discovered in 1881 and researchers estimate that she was between 30 and 40 years old when she died around 1530 BC.

From the writings left about Lady Rai, we know that she was the lady-in-waiting of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, the first queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ape Egypt. The mummified body of Ahmose Iphapy, Ahmose Nefertari’s harpy, was found in Lady Rai’s outer coffin.

The embalming process of Mrs Rai involved wrapping him while he was alive. His face and body were covered with a mixture of resin and salt. There was an embalming incision on the left side of his body which was covered with an embalming plate. Jewellery would have been placed on his right wrist during the mummification process.

In 2009, researchers performed a CT scan of Lady Rai’s body and discovered that she had atherosclerosis. She is the oldest Kowé mummy to suffer from this disease and several other Egyptian mummies also show signs of atherosclerosis. Lady Rai (ca. 1570/1560–1530 BC) was an attractive Egyptian woman of the early 18th Dynasty who served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Ahmose-Nefertari.

Her mummified remains were discovered in the Royal Cachette (TT320) next to Deir el-Bahari in 1881 and she is estimated to have been 30 years old at the time of her death. The mummy was wrapped by Grafto Elliot Smith in 1909. He called her mummy “the most perfect example of embalming that has come down to us from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, or perhaps even from any period”. It is now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

For three years after his 1922 discovery of the tomb of Kiпg Tυtaпkhamυп, archaeologist Howard Carter thought little of a toppled decorated wooden box containing two small resin-covered coffins, each containing one more coffin. Small ones covered with gold leaf. Inside these coffins were two typical mummies. Concerned, Carter explored the…