NOVOSIBIRSK, RUSSIA—MRI scans of ‘Princess Ukok,’ the mummified remains of a Pazyryk woman who was buried in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains 2,500 years ago, show that she suffered from breast cancer. It had been thought that her fractured skull and dislocated joints, perhaps from a fall from a horse, had been the cause of her death. “During the imaging of the mammary glands, we paid attention to their asymmetric structure and the varying asymmetry of the MR signal. We are dealing with a primary tumor in the right breast and right axial lymph nodes with metastases,” Andrey Letyagin of the Russian Academy of Medical Science told The Siberian Times. Letyagin and his colleague Andrey Savelov think that in her weakened state, the princess may have fallen from her horse while traveling to winter camp. To read about body decoration on other Pazyryk mummies, see ARCHAEOLOGY’s special package “Ancient Tattoos.”
