The mystery of 2200-year-old royal mummy addiction and love of tattooing was revealed

The mummies that possessed the world's oldest shroud turned out to be . addicted and tattooed.

In 1949, the world-famous Hermitage museum in St Petersburg (Russia) welcomed two 2200-year-old mummies.

These mummies are believed to be a leading couple of the Capcian royal family of Pazyryk culture . The corpse of two people was buried in an ice in the Altai Mountains all the time, until excavated by former Soviet archaeologists.

Royal mummy in the Hermitage museum.

Although this is not the oldest mummy in the world, the special point is that they own the shroud that has the oldest date ever - from the 5th century BC.

However, the cause of the deaths of these two characters is still submerged in mystery, fearing to damage the corpse if intervened too deeply.

And so far, modern technology has allowed experts to exploit the mysteries surrounding these mummies, by radiography (X-ray).

Modern technology has allowed experts to exploit the mysteries surrounding these mummies.

"The purpose of the study is to find out the cause of death, rebuild the appearance in life, and learn more about the technique of embalming," said a researcher.

Through scans, experts discovered that the couple loved tattooing. On the man's shoulder there is a picture of a predator - possibly a tiger - and a horse.

On the right arm is a tail-striped predator with several birds. Finally, under the knee tattoo a group of ungulates.

On the shoulder the man has a tiger tattoo.

Tattoo on the arm.

The tattoo on the man's body.

Tattoo in the heel.

And the woman, she did not tattoo on her shoulder, but her arms were . capped. The left hand is a bird of prey, attacking a reindeer, with a chicken on the back of his hand. And yet, the arm has two tigers and a snow leopard is also hunting.

Woman with arms . squeaky.

Tattoo in the woman's hand.

In general, two mummies are tattooed with real creatures, and this is quite unusual in Pazyryk's culture - mainly tattooing mythical creatures on people.

In addition, it seems that while the two mummies still love . smoking grass, because there are traces that cannabis is burned in the grave, like a ritual to see the two people back to heaven.

As for the mummification method, the experts said that in the skull of the 2 there was a bore to draw the brain. On the abdomen, there is a horizontal rib incision to remove organs.