Revealed: A 1,000-Year-Old Secret Hidden in a Buddha Statue

Scientists have found something unusual in a nearly 1,000-year-old Chinese Buddha statue on display in Holland - a mummified monk!

A CT scan and an endoscopy were carried out on the statue to confirm this bizarre discovery.

The statue was shown outside China for the very first time as part of the 'Mummies: Life Beyond Death' exhibition at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands last year.

The event brochure called it the 'eye-catcher of the exhibition' and reaffirmed the findings of the first round of CT scans. "On the outside, it looks like a large statue of Buddha. Scan research has shown that on the inside it is a mummy of a Buddhist monk who lived around the year 1100," it read.

The mummified body is believed to be of Buddhist master Liuquan of the Chinese Meditation School, according to the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, Netherlands, where the medical tests were conducted. It is still unclear whether this is a case of self-mummification, a popular practice among Asian monks.

Last month, a Mongolian Buddhist monk in 'deep meditation', about 200-years-old, was found in the Songino Khairkhan province of Mongolia.

Liuquan will be on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum until May 2015.