In October 2000, a stunning discovery hit the antiquities market in Pakistan: a mummy in a gilded coffin, wearing a golden crown, with a cuneiform inscription identifying her as Rhodugune, a daughter of the Persian king Xerxes. Experts dated the Persian Princess to around 600 BC, and Iran, Pakistan, and the Taliban each rushed to claim her. The asking price on the black market was 600 million rupees, about $11 million.
Then the story fell apart. Asma Ibrahim, a curator at the National Museum of Pakistan, noticed the body was not nearly as old as its coffin — the face showed decomposition fungus, the sign of a recent death. Carbon dating put the coffin at about 250 years old. The inscription used a Greek spelling of the name, and the corpse had been mummified all wrong, with the heart removed rather than left in place.
Ibrahim's 2001 report concluded the "princess" was a woman of about 21 to 25 who had died around 1996 — a modern forgery, and quite possibly a murder victim.
Previously:
• This freaky mermaid-monkey may not be what it seems, scientists report
