2,500-Year-Old Siberian Mummy Reveals Stunning Ancient Tattoos!
A remarkable new study has revealed stunningly detailed tattoos on a 2,500-year-old mummy found in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, offering fresh insight into the tattooing techniques, cultural symbolism, and artistic skill of Iron Age nomads. Thanks to high-resolution near-infrared imaging, researchers have been able to reconstruct the body art with incredible precision, far beyond anything previously seen.
The mummy in question was a woman, around 50 years old at the time of her death, and a member of the Pazyryk culture, an Iron Age society that thrived between the 6th and 2nd centuries BCE on the Eurasian steppe. The Pazyryk were known for their elaborate burial mounds (kurgans), where bodies were placed in chambers dug into permafrost. This frozen environment preserved organic material like skin and, crucially, tattoos.
Photo Credit: G. Caspari et al., Antiquity (2025)
While tattooed Pazyryk mummies had been discovered decades ago, older imaging methods couldn't properly capture the intricate detail. But now, using advanced near-infrared photography with submillimetre accuracy, Dr Gino Caspari and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology have brought these ancient artworks back to life.
The tattoos, now digitally mapped, include powerful imagery: a stag encircled by leopards on one forearm, and a griffin in combat with a deer on the other. These designs are so delicately rendered that they’ve caught the eye of modern tattoo artists. According to Caspari, this wasn’t just decoration, it was a specialised craft that likely required training, a keen eye, and a strong sense of aesthetic.
Photo Credit: G. Caspari et al., Antiquity (2025)
Interestingly, the tattoos on each arm show noticeable differences in quality. The right arm features smooth, deliberate lines that suggest the work of a skilled hand, possibly completed over multiple sessions. The left, however, displays rougher, less precise designs, maybe the effort of an apprentice or earlier tattoos done in youth.
To better understand how these tattoos were made, the researchers teamed up with Daniel Riday, a tattooist who specialises in recreating ancient designs using traditional methods. His analysis suggests the tattoos were likely hand-poked using both single and multi-point tools. Though no tattoo equipment has been found in Pazyryk graves, it's thought they used materials like bone or horn, and pigmented the skin with soot or charred plants. Some of the images may even have been stencilled onto the skin before inking.
Photo Credit: G. Caspari et al., Antiquity (2025)
One major discovery was that many of the tattoos had been cut during the embalming process, raising a compelling question: did the Pazyryk view tattoos differently in death? Unlike other ancient cultures where tattoos had spiritual afterlife significance, these may have been more about identity, social status, or group belonging during life, rather than the hereafter.
The mummy’s preservation is thanks to the permafrost, but that’s now under threat. With climate change accelerating the thawing of these frozen tombs, archaeologists stress the urgency of capturing high-tech records of what remains. The Altai Mountains, first explored in the 19th century and later revisited by Soviet and international teams in the 20th, are still among the richest sites for studying ancient tattoo culture.
Dr Caspari and his team hope that by digitally preserving these tattoos, and comparing them with reconstructions created by artists like Riday, they’ll eventually be able to identify individual tattooists' styles and trace how these techniques and traditions spread across ancient Eurasia.