Akhmim (Egypte) :2,200-year-old Mummy Was Couch Potato, Had Osteoporosis

Ancient Egyptian named Iret-Khor-Ero loved his starch and also had terrible teeth, according to CT scans of the mummy going on display in Israel.

Ido Efrati and The Associated Press

Source - http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.733585

Iret-Khor-Ero - Aroali Posner
A 2,200-year-old mummy stored in Israel for decades proves to be of a sedentary ancient Egyptian with an affection for starchy foods and inactivity.
The body of Iret Khor-Ero reached the Jesuit Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem in 1928, a present from Jesuits in Alexandria. Very little was otherwise known about him except, says the museum, that he originally hailed from Akhmim, some 480 kilometers south of present-day Cairo.
Ahead of displaying his remains, starting Wednesday, the mummy was scanned and lo, he could almost have been a modern.
CT scans of the remains show he had osteoporosis and tooth decay, the Israel Museum said on Tuesday. The results indicate that at least while alive, the man was largely sedentary, avoided manual labor in the sun and probably ate a carbohydrate-heavy diet.
The findings bolster previous studies showing that ancient Egyptians suffered from not a few diseases we know today, including arteriosclerosis and cancer. "Today we have technology to look inside the mummy noninvasively, and can study the processes of embalming, and study the person himself," says Dr. Hila May of Tel Aviv University, one of the scientists who examined Khor-Ero.
They noticed the osteoporosis because of fractures in Khor-Ero's the spine, typical of the brittle bone disease.
"Osteoporosis is a disease that is characteristic of the 20th century, when people don't work so hard. We are glued to screens," said Galit Bennett, who curated the mummy exhibit. "We were very surprised that there were people who didn't do physical work and that it affected their bodies like this man here."
Khor-Ero had been thought to be a young man, around 17, but the latest analyses indicate that he was in his 40s when he died.
Sometimes during embalming, internal organs removed for the process were returned to the body. In Khor-Ero's case, there is something in his abdomen, but it is not clear what. It is clear that he was about 1.67 meters in height – about 5"6.