The face of a 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummy from the Old Kingdom of pharaohs has been reconstructed using the latest technology and is now ready to meet visitors in Germany, reports said on Wednesday. A wealthy civil servant in Ancient Egypt, he is now one of the world’s best-researched mummies. He is known as Idu II, and is affectionately called “Mr. Idu” by the researchers who’ve studied him for many years.
Now the face of Idu II is on display at the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, according to German daily Bild.
The director of the museum, Regine Schulz reportedly said that Idu no longer looks scary and looks like any ordinary person living today. With the life-size version of the mummy’s head “we are going back 4,000 years,” Egyptologist Oliver Gauert said Friday while presenting the foam version of the head in Hildesheim. “You can look a person in the face.”
Researchers have concluded that he was 1.66 meters (5.44 feet) tall. He is also said to be right-handed and not muscular. As a welcome importer of wood from Lebanon, he was able to afford a coffin made out of cedar wood.
The remains of Idu were moved to a special room, where his mummy, sarcophagus and other possessions, including stamps, gold and jewelry are displayed.
Idu II was reportedly a governor in Ancient Egypt who served during the period of the Old Kingdom, around 2,200 BC.
His tomb was discovered in the western part of the royal tombs at Giza in 1914 by Wilhelm Pelizaeus, who co-founded the Hildesheim museum.
More proof Egyptians were white and not black.