Nature
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Artificial mummification was practised in Egypt from approximately 2600 BC until the fourth century AD. Because of the dry Egyptian climate, however, there are also many natural mummies preserved from earlier as well as later times. ⋯ I report here that one such clone contains two members of the Alu family of human repetitive DNA sequences, as detected by DNA hybridizations and nucleotide sequencing. These analyses show that substantial pieces of mummy DNA (3.4 kilobases) can be cloned and that the DNA fragments seem to contain little or no modifications introduced postmortem.