Editing Persian Princess (section)

==Investigation==
News of the Persian Princess prompted American archaeologist [[Oscar White Muscarella]] to describe an incident the previous March when he was shown photographs of a similar mummy. Amanollah Riggi, a middleman working on behalf of an unidentified antiquities dealer in Pakistan, had approached him, claiming its owners were a [[Zoroastrian]] family who had brought it to the country. The seller had claimed that it was a daughter of Xerxes, based on a translation of the cuneiform of the [[Pectoral (Ancient Egypt)|breastplate]].<ref name=archaeology/>

The cuneiform text on the breastplate contained a passage from the [[Behistun inscription]] in western Iran.<ref name=schmitt/>{{rp|7}} The Behistun inscription was carved during the reign of [[Darius the Great|Darius]], the father of Xerxes. When the dealer's representative had sent a piece of a coffin to be [[carbon dating|carbon dated]], analysis had shown that the coffin was only around 250 years old. Muscarella had suspected a forgery and severed contact. He had informed [[Interpol]] through the FBI.<ref name=archaeology/>

When [[Asma Ibrahim]], the curator of the National Museum of Pakistan, studied the item in police custody, she realised that the corpse was not as old as the coffin. The body had shown signs of decomposition fungus on the face,<ref>{{cite web |title=Trowelblazers Interview: Asma Ibhrahim | date=4 August 2021 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3a8Rj_YrhY&t=5s |publisher=Trowelblazers |access-date=4 November 2021}}</ref> a sign of a recently deceased body, and the mat below the body was about five years old. During the investigation, Iran and the Taliban repeated their demands.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} The Taliban claimed that they had apprehended the smugglers who had taken the mummy out of Afghanistan.

The inscriptions on the breastplate were not in proper grammatical Persian.<ref name=schmitt/>{{rp|6;8–10}} Instead of a Persian form of the daughter's name, ''Wardegauna'', the forgers had used a [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] version ''Rhodugune''.<ref name=schmitt/>{{rp|10–2}} [[CAT scan|CAT]] and [[X-ray]] scans in [[Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi|Agha Khan Hospital]] indicated that the mummification had not been made following ancient Egyptian custom – for example, the heart had been removed along with the rest of the internal organs, whereas the heart of a genuine Egyptian mummy would normally be left inside the body. Furthermore, tendons that should have decayed over the centuries were still intact.<ref name=mystery/>

Ibrahim published her report on 17 April 2001. In it, she stated that the "Persian princess" was in fact a woman about 21–25 years of age, who had died around 1996, possibly killed with a blunt instrument to the lower back/pelvic region (e.g., hit by vehicle from behind).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/persianmummy.shtml|title=BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - The Mystery of the Persian Mummy|first=British Broadcasting|last=Corporation|work=bbc.co.uk|access-date=1 October 2016}}</ref> A subsequent [[accelerator mass spectrometry]] dating also confirmed the mummy's status as a modern fake.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kretschmer|first1=M. |last2=von Grundherr|first2=K. |last3=Kritzler|first3=K. |last4=Morgenroth|first4=G. |last5=Scharf|first5=A|last6=Uhl|first6=T. |display-authors=3|year=2004 |title=The mystery of the Persian mummy: original or fake?|journal=Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research|series=B|pages=672–675|volume=223–224|doi=10.1016/j.nimb.2004.04.124 |bibcode=2004NIMPB.223..672K }}</ref> Her teeth had been removed after death, and her hip joint, pelvis and backbone damaged, before the body had been filled with powder. Police began to investigate a possible murder and arrested a number of suspects in Baluchistan.<ref name=mystery/>