An Archaeologist Found Crumbling Remains of a Mummified Queen—and Her Exceptionally Preserved Lungs

3 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:When a French archaeologist lifted the lid of a stone sarcophagus in 1959, he found the skeletal remains of a queen who had been mummified, but almost no soft tissue survived. Almost.The part of Queen Arnegunde that did survive was one of her lungs, and electron microscopy later revealed that it had been filled with an embalming fluid of oils, herbs, and resins.Another reason for this preservation might have been that, compared to other tissues, lungs have fewer epithelial cells, which contribute to the breakdown of soft tissues after death. Mummies have been unwrapped in various states of preservation—from looking ready to step out of the tomb to looking ready to crumble into a million pieces—for as long as we’ve been searching for them. But the mummy of a Frankish queen who died around 1,400 years ago was in a pretty unusual state. While the rest of the body had skeletonized centuries before, her lungs had been mysteriously preserved.Queen Arnegunde was a royal of the Merovingian dynasty who lived from around 510-520 C.E. to 580-590 C.E. Her skeletonized remains were discovered in 1959 by Michel Fleury when he opened a stone sarcophagus in the Basilica of St. Denis in Paris, and among the fragments of bone, he found what was left of her reddish-brown tunic, held with a golden braid, and violet blouse, both made of silk. She wore a silk veil adorned with gold and garnet cloisonné pins. Her buckled leather shoes had animal motifs on the ends of their straps. There was also gold and silver jewelry that included a ring inscribed with the name Arnegundis, earrings, and an ornate copper alloy belt, along with a single strand of hair that had survived long centuries in the darkness.Fleury also noticed something unusual about the remains of the woman, who was one of the six wives of King Clotaire I and the mother of King Chilperic I of Neustria. While no other soft tissue had survived, one of her lungs had been mysteriously mummified. Whether it was naturally mummified by the cool, dry environment of the basilica or artificially mummified was unknown at the time. The question would go unanswered until 2016. It was then that bioanthropologist Raffaella Bianucci of the University of Turin biopsied the lung and examined samples using scanning electron microscopy. While the stale, dry air in catacombs has been known to mummify bodies naturally in some cases, it turned out that the queen had undergone artificial mummification, and that the effects were augmented by the method used and by the belt she wore.The mummification practices used by the Franks during the sixth century were adapted from the Romans, who had taken on Egyptian methods after the conquest of Egypt by Augustus in 31 B.C.E. Only individuals from the upper echelon of Frankish society—including kings, queens, and holy men and women—were mummified. The Franks’ modified technique bypassed the removal of internal organs. It involved infusing a concoction of resins and plant materials through the mouth, with mummies later being wrapped in linen strips that had been soaked in oils, herbs, and resins. Most of these substances degraded over time. What Bianucci found was evidence of benzoic acid and other substances derived from aromatic plants that had also been used in the balms ancient Egyptians rubbed on mummified bodies. After this liquid agglomerated in the lungs, it reacted with the copper of the queen’s belt, and high concentrations of copper ions and copper oxide contributed to the preservation of her lung.Another reason Arnegunde’s lung mummified well probably lies in the makeup of its tissue. Lung tissue resists putrefaction partly because it contains fewer lysosome-rich epithelial cells. Lysosomes are loaded with hydrolases, enzymes that use water to break tissue apart from the inside—so with fewer of them on hand, desiccation can outpace decomposition. Exceptional lung preservation was also seen in an Egyptian Coptic mummy of an individual whose lifetime may have overlapped with or been slightly after that of Queen Arnegunde.The queen was 5-foot-8, a typical height for women of the early medieval period, and she died when she was around 60 years old. While Arnegunde did not descend from the Merovingian bloodline, she was still a princess of the German kingdom of Thuringia who had become part of the dynasty by marriage. She lived a rather long life compared to the often short and brutal existence of many others, which even many royals—and their lungs—could not escape.Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.