Scientists find oldest mummy

Scientists writing in the British journal Nature say they've uncovered the world's oldest embalmed mummy.

They say new tests on a skeleton found near Cairo eighty years ago show it's some four thousand years old -- pre-dating Tutankhamun and Ramses the Second by almost a thousand years.

The mummy is thought to be that of an ancient Egyptian government minister, Idu, who ran the pine wood trade on the banks of the Nile.

They say his skeleton was embalmed in a solution of salt and pine resin, a method they say was so sucessful his bones remain in near perfect condition.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service