Even members of the European high nobility used to not necessarily live a healthy life, as the almost 400-year-old mummified remains of an aristocrat's infant reveal. The child mummy subjected to a virtual autopsy comes from the crypt of the Counts of Starhemberg in Upper Austria. The one to one and a half year old child was well fed and overweight when he was alive, but showed clear signs of rickets – probably caused by a lack of sunlight.
When a dead body mummifies, dehydration also preserves organs, tissues, and other soft tissue. As a result, mummies offer unique insights into the life and death of people from times past. However, while many mummies are known from South America or Egypt, they remain very rare in Europe. Only some of the dead buried in a tomb or crypt were the conditions dry enough to permit mummification.
Mystery about the wooden children's coffin in the noble crypt
Andreas Nerlich from the Munich-Bogenhausen Clinic and his colleagues have now examined a very special rarity: the mummy of a child from the European aristocracy. It comes from the crypt of the Counts of Starhemberg, one of the oldest noble families in Austria. The lineage of this family goes back to the eleventh century. Since 1212 they have resided in Wildberg Castle, around 15 kilometers from the city of Linz. From 1499, the family crypt of the von Starhembergs was in the nearby town of Hellmonsödt, in which the counts, their first-born descendants and, in rare cases, their wives were laid to rest.
"Most of these dead were buried in magnificent metal coffins on which the names of the deceased were written," report Nerlich and his colleagues. All the more unusual is a small wooden children's coffin, which stood in the crypt without any inscription or other indication of its contents. In order to find out more about the child buried in it, Nerlich and his team have now opened the coffin for the first time and found that the child was mummified and therefore very well preserved. They then subjected the little corpse to a virtual autopsy using computer tomography and took tissue samples in order to be able to analyze the child's age and tissue condition.
Firstborn son of an earl
The first question was who this child was. Despite the unadorned wooden coffin, the little corpse was wrapped in a finely woven, costly silk coat, which indicates a high position, as the researchers report. Combined with the fact that the child was buried in the family crypt of the Counts of Starhemberg, the conclusion that it had to be a member of this noble family was obvious – but which one? Radiocarbon dating of the tissue samples showed that the child must have died between 1456 and 1635. Because the Starhemberg crypt was rebuilt at the beginning of the 17th century, Nerlich and his team assumed the time of death to be after 1600.
In order to clarify the child's identity, the scientists searched the Starhemberg family tree for clues to family members who died young and found 20 entries. But only three of them were firstborn – and were therefore eligible for burial in the crypt. Of these, two had died prematurely, leaving Reichard Wilhelm von Starhemberg, born in 1625, as the most likely candidate. "According to our data, this child was the count's first son and the first child to die after the crypt was renovated," explains Nerlich. The little body was buried next to the sarcophagus of his grandfather Reichard von Starhemberg.
Rickets from want of sunlight
Next, the researchers evaluated the results of their virtual autopsy. The CT images revealed that the deceased Grafensöhnchen was a 53 centimeter tall, one to one and a half year old toddler. As expected from the historical record, the infant was a boy. In addition, the mummy of this child showed some signs of pathological changes. "The first was evidence that the child was overweight, which was reflected in the thickness of the layer of fat under the skin," Nerlich and his colleagues report. Clear folds of fat on the child's stocky legs are also evidence of its chubby build. The little count's son was fed well - rather too well.
One illness was much more serious, and it showed up primarily in the characteristic deformities of the ribs and chest: the little boy was apparently suffering from rickets. This disease is a consequence of a chronic lack of vitamin D, which can be caused by malnutrition, but also by too little sunlight. Because this is needed to convert the precursors of this vitamin, which is important for the bones, in the skin into the biologically active form. "Because this toddler was clearly not malnourished, his rickety bone lesions must result from another vitamin D metabolism disorder," say Nerlich and his colleagues.
The researchers see the lack of sunlight as the most obvious explanation. "In earlier times, socially high-ranking people avoided the sun's rays and the associated tanning of the skin," they explain. "One expected aristocrats to have white, pale skin, while workers were suntanned." For the young count's son, however, protection from the sun had serious consequences - and possibly even indirectly his cause of death. Because, as Nerlich and his team explain, rickets is often accompanied by an increased susceptibility to infections. CT scans of the infant's lungs indicate that he had, and may have died from, severe pneumonia at the time of his death.
Source: Frontiers; Article: Frontiers in Medicine, doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.979670