Around 2600 years ago in Egypt, a woman called Irtyersenu died. She was mummified and buried at the necropolis at Thebes, where she remained for over two millennia before being unearthed in 1819. Her well-preserved body was brought to the British Museum where it was examined by the physician and obstetrician Augustus Bozzi Granville. It was the first ever medical autopsy of an Egyptian mummy and Granville presented his results to the Royal Society in 1825. His conclusion: Ityersenu died of ovarian cancer.
The mummification techniques of ancient Egypt were so good that Irtyersenu's corpse still retained many soft tissues, and most of her organs intact. In particular, an unusual mass around her right ovary caught Granville's attention. He interpreted it as a cancer and the cause of the lady's death. But according to later studies, the tumour was a benign one, far from the fatal affliction that Granville envisaged.
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