Archaeologists have found a 2,000-year-old mummy with a gold tongue at an ancient Egyptian site called Taposiris Magna.
Embalmers perhaps placed the golden tongue on the mummy to ensure that the deceased would be able to speak in the afterlife, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement released Jan 29.
For instance, if the golden-tongued mummy encountered Osiris, the god of the underworld, in the afterlife, they would have needed to be able to speak to the god, the statement said. It isn’t clear if the mummy had a speech impediment when they were alive. It’s also not clear why the tongue was made out of gold specifically.
