World's earliest tattoos discovered on mummies

Dating to between 3351 to 3017 BC, tattoos of animals and motifs have been discovered on an Egyptian mummy at British Museum.

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Researchers used infrared technology to find figural tattoos of a wild bull and a sheep on the upper arm of a male mummy.

Infrared image of the male mummy known as Gebelein Man

The mummy belongs to Egypt’s Predynastic period, the era preceding the country’s unification by the first pharaoh at around 3100 BC. All visible skin on the mummified individual was examined for signs of body modification as part of a new programme of conservation and research.

The male mummy, known as ‘Gebelein Man A’ has been on display in the British Museum almost continuously since his discovery around 100 years ago. Previous CT scans showed that Gebelein Man A was a young man (18–21 years of age) when he died from a stab wound to the back.

Dark smudges on his arm, appearing as faint markings under natural light, had remained unexamined.

Left: Detail of the tattoos observed on his right arm under infrared light—– Lower right: The mummy and tattoos under normal lighting conditions.

Infrared photography recently revealed that these smudges were in fact tattoos of two slightly overlapping horned animals.

The horned animals have been tentatively identified as a wild bull (long tail, elaborate horns) and a Barbary sheep (curving horns, humped shoulder). Both animals are well known in Predynastic Egyptian art

.The designs are not superficial and have been applied to the dermis layer of the skin, the pigment was carbon-based, possibly some kind of soot.

Another mummy, a female one, known as ‘Gebelein Woman’, has several tattoos; a series of four small ‘S’ shaped motifs can be seen running vertically over her right shoulder. Below them on the right arm is a linear motif which is similar to objects held by figures participating in ceremonial activities on painted ceramics of the same period.

The application of tattoos to the human body enjoyed a long and diverse history in many ancient cultures. At present the oldest surviving examples are the mainly geometric tattoos on the Alpine mummy known as Ötzi (4th millennium BC) whose skin was preserved by the ice of the Tyrolean Alps. Based on the radiocarbon dates, the Gebelein tattoos are approximately contemporary with Ötzi (3370–3100 BC), and can therefore be considered among the earliest surviving tattoos in the world.

These finds demonstrate conclusively that tattooing was practised during Egypt’s Predynastic period (c. 4000–3100 BC) by both men and women. As the oldest known tattooed figural motifs, they add to our understanding of the range of potential uses of tattoos at the dawn of ancient Egyptian civilisation and expand our view of the practice of tattooing in prehistoric times.

The full findings have been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.