Johnson’s pride after discovering church mummy is his ancestor

BORIS JOHNSON has told of his pride in learning that a mummy discovered in a Swiss church is his ancestor.

The Foreign Secretary said he was “excited” to hear that the unknown mummy, discovered four decades ago, has now been identified as his “late great-grand ‘mummy’”.

Scientists said Anna Catharina Bischoff, who died in 1787, is the great-great-great-great-greatgreat-grandmother of Mr Johnson. She is thought to have died aged 68 from mercury poisoning, which may have been as a result of being treated for syphilis, possibly contracted while she cared for patients suffering from the sexually transmitted disease.

Mr Johnson tweeted: “Very excited to hear about my late great grand ‘mummy’ – a pioneer in sexual health care. Very proud.”

The 230-year-old mummy was found four decades ago during excavations of Barfusser church in Basel. Anthropologist Gerhard Hotz, curator at Basel’s Natural History Museum, said identifying Ms Bischoff took two years of research.

A trawl of archives allowed researchers to identify the grave number and name of the mummy. They then extracted DNA from a toe which gave a 99.8 per cent match to two living descendants in Basel and Ohio. Her daughter married Christian Friedrich Pfeffel von Kriegelstein, making her an ancestor of Mr Johnson, whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.