When a mummy is discovered in Pakistan, the entire world takes notice. But archaeologists soon realize they haven't unearthed an ancient mummified princess... they've unearthed a murder case.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What mysterious discovery was made in a basement in Pakistan?
You descend the staircase slowly, plunging yourself further into darkness with every step. The air grows cold. Musty. As you reach for the flashlight on your hip, you hesitate. You can still turn around, go back upstairs into the house, let someone else be the first to step through the cellar door waiting for you at the bottom of the steps.
But just as quickly, you put the thought from your mind, because you have to know. You click your flashlight on and continue down. A new scent is filling your nostrils now, and it becomes overpowering as you push the door open. You sweep the windowless room with your flashlight. It's cluttered with cardboard boxes and tools and the things you'd expect to find in a residential basement.
That's when you suddenly let out a gasp. Because your flashlight beam has landed on something, or rather, someone, who shouldn't be there. October 19th, 2000. Dr. Asma Ibrahim dashes through the streets of Karachi, Pakistan as fast as her legs can carry her. She's been summoned to the local police station. An emergency requires her very specific set of professional skills.
It's a strange request because Ibrahim isn't a medical doctor. She's an archaeologist and curator of the National Museum. Archaeological emergencies happen in Indiana Jones movies, not real life. And yet, the police claim they need her expertise immediately. So Dr. Ibrahim doesn't ask questions, she just runs. Her lungs are burning by the time she reaches the police station.
There, she's quickly ushered into a side room where officers are crowded around something. Their excited whispers stop as Dr. Ibrahim enters, and the officers step inside. And then she sees it. At the center of the room stands a massive, ornate wooden box with flowers and trees carved along the sides.
The lid of the wooden box is off, and one glance inside tells Ibrahim that she was right to rush over so quickly. A white stone coffin is inside. Ibrahim decides that it's probably made of alabaster, a valuable stone to carry a valuable passenger. The coffin's heavy stone lid is cracked, splitting the ancient script that adorns it in half.
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Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Asma Ibrahim and what role did she play?
It's still legible, however, and Ibrahim feels a rush of exhilaration as she runs her fingers across the symbols. This, she knows, is no ordinary coffin. This is a sarcophagus, the final resting place of a mummy. The police weren't exaggerating on the phone. They actually found this stashed away in someone's basement. This ancient, priceless relic. A broad smile develops across her face.
The police officers can't contain themselves either. They're practically jumping up and down with glee, saying over and over, We have a mummy! We have a mummy! A mummy in Pakistan! Everyone in the room agrees this is the event of the century. This is a historic moment, and no one understands this better than Dr. Ibrahim. The existence of a mummy in this region is nearly unthinkable.
She knows that the contents of this box could challenge historical understandings of the Persian Empire. For Dr. Ibrahim, this is the chance of a lifetime. The police are excited to open the sarcophagus, and they want Dr. Ibrahim to examine its contents. Ibrahim is itching to dive in as well, but she knows a moment this monumental should be recorded, for both posterity and science.
The only video camera in this room is a small, clunky device, the kind you might use to record a child's recital, but it'll have to do. The record button is pressed, and Dr. Ibrahim gets to work. Together, they lift away the cracked stone lid to reveal what's underneath. And there, lying before them, is a tiny body.
Not even five feet in length, the mummy in the box had once been a wisp of a person. But now its presence fills the room like a thunderclap. The mummy is fully covered, wrapped in strips of brown muslin that are mottled with age. The cloth is hard to the touch, as if it's forming a protective shell around the fragile body inside.
Ibrahim will later discover that the effect is caused by resin that seeped into the wraps years ago, solidifying them into a cocoon. But for now, she can't wonder about that. She can't concentrate on any single detail. There's just too much to take in. A gold plate in the shape of a cypress tree rests on the mummy's stomach.
On its chest, shining against the brown cloth, is a gold breastplate etched with an unusual script. The text, written in an ancient form of cuneiform, reads, I, the daughter of Xerxes, the great king, I am Ruduamna. Ibrahim has no need to decipher the cuneiform to know that this mummy might be royalty. Because right above the gold mask covering its face, a beautiful gold crown rests on its head.
Dr. Ibrahim steps away for a moment to collect herself. It's a lot to take in. There's no way to overstate how huge finding a Persian royal mummy is. Because the thing is, before this mummy was found, no one knew of any Middle Eastern cultures aside from the ancient Egyptians that had intentionally created mummies. Now, there are, of course, accidental mummies.
Technically, a mummy is nothing more than a dead body that's been preserved. In Iran, there are the saltmen who were trapped under the collapse of a salt mine, their bodies completely preserved by the minerals that they were buried under. And in Lebanon, there were the Maronite mummies who died in a cave in the 13th century. The dry air and high altitude kept them from decaying.
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Chapter 3: What makes the discovered mummy so historically significant?
But the ancient Egyptians are the only ones in this part of the world known to purposefully mummify their dead. And that is why this discovery is such a big deal. Concurrently, however, that's also why it should have set off alarm bells in Ibrahim's head. The mummies immediately transferred to a sealed nitrogen chamber at the Pakistan National Museum to be kept under Ibrahim's watchful eye.
She gathers a team of experts, and together, they dive into the mystery, uncovering as much about the mummy as they can. After the most incredible whirlwind week of Dr. Ibrahim's career, a press conference is held to announce that Pakistani officials have discovered a 2,600-year-old Persian princess. But Dr. Ibrahim can't bask in the afterglow for long.
Immediately, other countries begin to lay claim to Pakistan's discovery. After all, just because the mummy was found in a Pakistani's basement doesn't mean the mummy is from Pakistan and could have been smuggled in from anywhere on the black market. Iran alleges that the mummy wasn't a princess at all, but rather a prince, an Achaemenian dynasty prince from the 6th century.
Iranian officials say that the mummy was stolen from them and that they already have the suspected thieves in custody. But the Taliban government of Afghanistan counters that claim, saying that the mummy was taken from their country during their protracted war. Even within Pakistan, infighting ensues.
The Awan tribe of the Balochistan province files a court petition, alleging that the cuneiform etched into the mummy's breastplate belongs to the Awan royal family and that the mummy should be moved to one of their local museums. And on top of all of this chaos, no insurance company will agree to cover the mummy until more is known about it.
They want ironclad proof that their investment is safe with a legitimate ancient mummy. And while that makes perfect sense, the National Museum needs their new princess to be insured. Without that safety net, the museum could be on the line for millions of dollars if anything were to happen to the body. And so, with multiple fires lit under her feet, Ibrahim gets to work.
She needs to find the truth about this Persian princess, but that'll be no easy task. The man who had the mummy in his basement is currently in custody and cooperating, but the story he's telling police only raises more questions. Detective Superintendent Farouk Awan is intimately familiar with the Persian Princess case. After all, he's the one who tracked it down on the black market.
But now, even though the mummy's been found and a suspect is in custody, the case still feels very unsolved. Only a few days prior, the Pakistani police had received a temp that a Karachi resident was hoarding a collection of antiques to sell illegally. And the crown jewel of that collection? An ancient mummy. Videos of the mummy had been passed around certain circles, shopping for buyers.
But before any takers could claim the mummy for themselves, the video found its way onto Awan's desk. And as soon as he saw it, he ordered an immediate raid. Ultimately, police located the mummy in the city of Quetta, hidden in a basement. And now, Awan sits at an interrogation table, across from the owner of that basement, a tribal leader named Sardar Wali Riki.
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Chapter 4: What controversies and claims arose following the mummy's discovery?
He and his men aren't experts in ancient artifacts. They're just police officers. Officers who were very good at their jobs, of course. But law enforcement isn't what this case needs right now.
What they need is to know more about the ancient origins of the mummy, where it actually might have come from, because Awan has interrogated a lot of suspects over the years, and he doesn't believe Riki's Quran Desert story for a minute. He quietly hopes that Dr. Ibrahim's team is making some headway, because as it stands, the police investigation has stalled out. November
The mummy's been at Dr. Ibrahim's museum for a month now. Her team is doing everything they can to learn more about their Persian princess. They hope the facts will prove that the mummy belongs solely to Pakistan. But so far, their discoveries aren't painting a clear picture. There's an 8-inch wound running from the princess's sternum down to her stomach, used to remove her internal organs.
The missing organs aren't unusual for a mummy, but the length of the cut is. In Egyptian mummies, for example, the incision is much shorter. Ibrahim and her team take this as promising news. Since there's never been a Pakistani mummy, no one can say what preparation tactics might have been used. The mummy's little quirks simply support their hypothesis.
They discover another quirk in the princess's body cavity. Her internal organs have been replaced with some kind of nondescript powder. Typically, expensive spices like myrrh would be used for this purpose, especially if the mummy was royalty. But this powder was nothing like they'd ever seen in a mummy before, especially not royalty. the mummy's heart has been removed as well.
Typically, that organ is left intact for the dead soul's journey through the afterlife. In order to preserve her as best they can, they opt not to unwrap her bindings, but they still need a way to see her body inside. And so, Ibrahim takes the mummy to a local Karachi hospital for a CT scan. From this, they learn that the mummy died when she was only 21 years old.
Ibrahim takes a tissue sample from the mummy and a wax sample from the coffin. Then she ships them off to a lab in Germany so they can undergo proper carbon dating. Ibrahim is excited for the results to come back. She's feeling very confident. In addition to all the quirks her team has discovered, the princess's facial structure looks, in Ibrahim's own words, quite Persian.
Her optimism, though, would not last. In January, Iran sends a group of representatives to examine the princess and determine whether or not the mummy is Iranian. Dr. Ibrahim welcomes them and gives them all the access to the mummy they require. She's not worried. Everything in her research has pointed to the mummy belonging to Pakistan. Besides, she's a scientist.
She just wants the truth to be known. Or, well, at least she thinks she does. Unfortunately for Ibrahim, the truth that the Iranians uncover is not a pretty one. During their investigation, the Iranians find a number of new unusual things about the princess.
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Chapter 5: Who is Detective Superintendent Farouk Awan and what is his involvement?
Pakistan's so-called Persian princess, they declare, is not a real mummy. It's a humiliating turn of events for Ibrahim and her team. They should have been able to pick out those red flags a mile away. Instead, they were so blinded by their excitement that they overlooked vital, obvious information. The mummy is not from the Persian Empire either.
The Iranian cuneiform is too shoddy, and the chemicals on its skin are far too modern. So now the question becomes, where and when is it from? When the carbon dating results come back from the German lab, Ibrahim braces herself for the worst. Even so, she's completely unprepared for what the lab has uncovered. This mummy is not 2,600 years old. In fact, she's not even 100 years old.
She's only been dead for about two years. It now occurs to Dr. Ibrahim that the body isn't a Persian princess after all. More likely, this is a victim of murder. The mystery is now back in the hands of the police. When the mummy was assumed to be 2,600 years old, the cause of her death could be left to academic speculation.
But now that police know how recently she died, her death needs to be investigated. The police recruit a top forensic pathologist to carry out an autopsy. Dr. Ibrahim joins him and an entire team of archeologists and doctors assist with the endeavor.
When Ibrahim and her team cut open the hardened muslin wrappings, they discover a woman with bleach-blonde tipped hair, a color that you will not find on any truly ancient Persian woman. Underneath the initial shell of cloth, the body's cover did even more wrappings. Once Ibrahim and her team unwrap her fully, it's easy to see how this woman was preserved.
She had been covered in drying chemicals like salt and bicarbonate soda and left out to dry. Now that the wrappings are removed, the team decides to give her one more CT scan. This scan reveals something that they didn't notice before. The vertebrae in her neck suddenly veer in the wrong direction. Her death, it would seem, was violent.
Not only does she have a broken neck, but her spine is also broken in a second location in her lower back. Her jaw, hip bone, and pelvis are broken as well. And none of these bone breaks had time to heal before she died, a strong indication that they came at the end. On top of this, her teeth have been removed to avoid dental record identification.
And according to the forensic pathologist, they were removed before she died, not after. This woman, whoever she was, seems to have had an absolutely brutal, torturous death. Dr. Ibrahim's heart breaks all over again, this time for this poor young woman, barely an adult with her entire life ahead of her, whose life was stolen in the most traumatic way possible. But why?
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Chapter 6: What story does the basement owner Sardar Wali Riki tell about the mummy?
Why would this young woman have been tortured and murdered? And most bafflingly of all, why was she being passed off as an ancient mummified princess? Creating a mummy out of a murder victim is so absurd that there can only be one motivation. And it's simple, really. Money.
A mummy as detailed and convincing as the Persian princess can have no other purpose but to fool a collector so thoroughly that they paid through the nose to own it. Pakistan has a booming black market for valuable antiquities. Both real and fake items are sold off as the real deal. And if the relic is convincing enough, then it can go for millions upon millions of dollars.
That is why this young woman lost her life. It was so that a group of criminals could gain a fistful of cash. And Ibrahim does believe that an entire team was involved. They had to be. They needed someone to prepare the mummy. They needed a carpenter to create the ornate box. They needed a stonemason to carve the coffin. And they needed a metal worker to create the gold ornamentations.
And, of course, they needed a few people who could kill a young woman. Or, at the very least, maim her body beyond recognition after death. After all, that was the only way she could look convincing enough to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Because that was the entire point, wasn't it? Taking a woman's body, along with her entire identity, and using it to line a man's pockets.
I'd like to be able to tell you that in the end, our Persian princess gets the justice that she deserves. But that's not what happens. No one is ever able to identify who she was when she was alive, nor are they able to uncover the truth behind her murder. And to this day, nobody knows what happened to her organs or teeth. The Karachi police launched an investigation, but it never goes anywhere.
There are no known DNA matches and no leads. And eventually, they just stop looking. After all, the woman has no identity and no known family. There are no leads, and there are more urgent cases to attend to. Ones that actually have a shot at being solved. As for our mummy thieves, or as they may be, mummy makers, there's not a happy ending there either.
Riki is sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempting to sell a dead body on the black market. And Baki, the man who Riki claims discovered the mummy, is never found. And so, the story of the faux Persian princess arrives at an unglamorous end. During the investigation, the mummy is kept at the National Museum. But once the case is closed, the museum relinquishes its hold on her.
She's unceremoniously removed from the premises, as if she had never been there at all. In 2002, the body is handed over to a charity that provides mortuary services. And by 2005, the organization has run out of available space, and so they ask local officials for permission to give her her last rites and a proper burial. They never receive that permission.
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Chapter 7: Why is the mummy trafficking market a concern in this case?
And so, in 2008, they bury the Persian princess in a mass grave full of other unidentified people. No one is ever charged with her murder. And with that, her secrets are buried with her, never to be unearthed again. But that doesn't mean that her legacy will stay underground with her. No, some truths have to surface.
Because this so-called Persian princess isn't the only contemporary mummy out there. Within a year of her initial discovery, two more Persian mummies are found on the black market, being sold for millions each. The implications of this are staggering. This isn't some amateur job. It's detailed enough to have fooled an entire nation's foremost archaeological experts for months.
And whoever made this mummy is confident enough to keep doing it again and again. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo. Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Alex Robinson. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.
Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton-Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden.
Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo.
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