These Hair Extensions Are 3,300 Years Old

Talk about vintage.

Post by Amarna Project.

When you think of ancient Egypt, the image that comes to mind doesn't typically include a weave. But when researchers uncovered bodies that were buried in an Egyptian city abandoned thousands of years ago, they found one woman who had 70 hair extensions attached to her head.

The cemetery was in the city of Amarna, which was built to be a new capital of Egypt in the 1300s B.C. In the study, which was published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, noted she was one of hundreds of people who were buried with their hair still intact. One even had both gray and black hair, which suggests that it came from multiple people.

The styles included braids, curls, and coils around the ears. One person appeared to even have dyed her hair orange. The styles were put together using fat, which kept it all in one place for so long. What's unclear, researchers say, was if the extensions were an everyday look or only used for burial.

Post by Amarna Project.

[h/t Huffington Post

Megan Friedman
Editor

Megan Friedman is the former managing editor of the Newsroom at Hearst. She's worked at NBC and Time, and is a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.