because of the intriguing circumstances of the death or the remarkable preservation of the body. The following are ten of the most fascinating mummies, (mainly because of the story behind them or the incredible preservation of the body) most of which are still viewable today.
10. Elmer McCurdy
Elmer
McCurdy (January 1880 – October 7th 1911) was an outlaw killed in a
gunfight in the Osage Hills in Oklahoma. A newspaper account gave
Elmer’s last words as “You’ll never take me alive!” His body was taken
to a funeral home in Oklahoma. When no one claimed the corpse, the
undertaker embalmed it with an arsenic-based preservative and allowed
people to see “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up” for a nickel, placed in
Elmer’s mouth, which the undertaker would collect later. Five years
later, a man showed up from a nearby traveling carnival claiming to be
Elmer’s long-lost brother wanting to give the corpse a proper burial.
Within two weeks, however, Elmer was a featured exhibit with the
carnival. For the next 60 years, Elmer’s body was sold to wax museums,
carnivals, and haunted houses.
The
owner of a haunted house near Mount Rushmore refused to purchase him
because he thought that Elmer’s body was actually a mannequin and not
lifelike enough. Eventually, the corpse wound up in “The Laff in the
Dark” funhouse at the Long Beach Pike amusement park in California.
During filming of the The Six Million Dollar Man shot in December 1976, a
crew member was moving what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was
hanging from a gallows. When the mannequin’s arm broke off, it was
discovered that it was in fact the mummified remains of Elmer McCurdy,
who was finally buried in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View
Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma on April 22nd 1977, with 2 cubic yards of
concrete over his casket so his remains would never be disturbed again.
9. Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir
Ilyich Lenin (10th April 1870 – 21st January 1924) was one of the
leading political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th
century, who masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in
1917, and was the architect and first head of the USSR. In 1918, he
narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded.
His long-term health was affected, and in May 1922 he suffered a stroke
from which he never fully recovered. In December 1922, he suffered a
second stroke that partly paralyzed his right side and caused him to
withdraw from active politics. In March 1923, he suffered a third stroke
that left him dumb and bed-ridden until he died on 21st of January
1924, aged 53, at his estate in Gorki Leninskiye. His body was embalmed
and exhibited in the Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow where it can still be
viewed today.
8. Saint Bernadette
Saint
Bernadette was born Maria-Bernada Sobirós (7th January 1844 – 16th
April 1879) and was a miller’s daughter from the town of Lourdes in
southern France. Despite her body not being technically mummified, she
definitely deserves a place on this list. From February 11th to July
16th 1858, she reported eighteen apparitions of “a small young lady.”
Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, these claims were
eventually declared to be worthy of belief after a canonical
investigation, and the apparition is known as ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’ –
the Virgin Mary. After her death, Bernadette’s body remains incorrupt
and can be viewed in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette in Nevers. On
December 8th, 1933, she was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
7. Juanita
Juanita
(“The Ice Maiden”) was discovered on the summit of Mount Ampato, Peru,
on September 8th, 1995. She was 12–14 when sacrificed 500 years ago – a
great honour for an Incan – they believed the Ampato God supplied water
and withheld avalanches in return for human sacrifices. A young girl,
boy and the skeleton of a woman were discovered in later expeditions, as
were items left as offerings to the gods. The eruption of nearby
volcano Mount. Sabancaya melted 500 years of ice and snow encasing
Juanita, who was almost entirely frozen – her skin, internal organs,
hair, clothing, blood and even the contents of her stomach preserved,
offering scientists a rare glimpse into the life of the Incas. Juanita
was wearing clothing resembling the finest textiles from Cuzco and was
the closest sacrifice to the Inca capital, suggesting she may have come
from a noble Cuzco family.
Juanita
was chosen as the most beautiful and innocent and would be ‘guaranteed
eternal life with the gods’. As the other bodies were further down the
mountain, they were not as pure and worthy as Juanita. It took
incredible effort (and whole entourages of priests, villagers,
provisions, water, as well as symbolic items used in the ritual – all
carried on the backs of hundreds of llamas and porters) to hold
sacrificial rituals in the thin air and life-threatening cold of Mount
Ampato – 20,000 feet high. Juanita was killed by a powerful blow to the
head and was probably given chicha, a strong hallucinogenic drink before
the ritual was performed. In 1996, President Clinton saw a photo of
Juanita and reportedly said, “If I were a single man, I might ask that
mummy out. That’s a good-looking mummy!” Juanita is on display at the
Museo Santuarios de Altura in Arequipa, Peru.
6. Ötzi the Iceman
Ötzi
the Iceman (also known as Similaun Man or Man from Hauslabjoch) is a
well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries
ago). The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in
the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch, on the border between Austria and
Italy. The nickname comes from Ötztal, the region in which he was
discovered. He is Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, and has offered
an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans. The cause
of death was most likely a blow to the head. The body and his belongings
are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano,
northern Italy.
5. Ginger
‘Ginger’
is the nickname given to the naturally preserved body of an adult man
(believed to be the earliest known ancient Egyptian “mummified” body),
who despite having died more than 5,000 years ago, had perfectly
preserved golden hair, and even toe and fingernails. Ginger was found in
at Gebelein, Egypt, and dates to the Late Predynastic period, around
3400 BC, or earlier. Before mummification was developed, human remains
were placed in shallow graves, in direct contact with the hot, dry sand,
which absorbed the water that constitutes 75% of the human weight.
Without moisture, bacteria cannot breed and cause decay, and the body is
preserved. However, it is uncertain whether Ginger’s mummification was
intentional or not, though since Ginger was buried with some pottery
vessels it is likely that the mummification was a result of preservation
techniques of those burying him. Ginger is currently on display in the
British Museum.
4. Tollund Man
Tollund
Man is the naturally mummified corpse of a man (a ‘bog body’) who lived
during the 4th century BC during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found
in May 1950, buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark,
which preserved his body. The head and face were so well-preserved that
at the time he was mistaken for a recent murder victim, however, he was
later found to have died over 1,500 years ago. Autopsies have shown that
the cause of death was hanging – the rope left visible furrows in the
skin beneath his chin and at the sides of his neck, however, there was
no mark at the back of the neck where the knot of the noose would have
been located. The body is displayed at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark,
though only the head is original, and is attached to a replica of the
body.
3. Rosalia Lombardo
Rosalia
Lombardo was an Italian child born in 1918 in Palermo, Sicily. She died
on December 6th 1920 of pneumonia. Rosalia’s father was so sorely
grieved upon her death that he approached Dr. Alfredo Salafia, a noted
embalmer and taxidermist, to preserve her. She was one of the last
corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Sicily and
one of the most well-known. Her preservation is such that it appears as
if she were only sleeping, hence receiving the nickname “Sleeping
Beauty”. She is considered one of the world’s best-preserved bodies and
it is hard to believe she died nearly 90 years ago. For many years, the
formula that preserved her so magnificently was a mystery, but it has
recently been discovered that she was injected with a mixture of
formalin, zinc salts, alcohol, salicylic acid, and glycerin.
Formalin,
now widely used by embalmers, is a mixture of formaldehyde and water
that kills bacteria. Dr. Salafia was one of the first to use this for
embalming bodies. Alcohol, along with the arid conditions in the
catacombs, would have dried Rosalia’s body and allowed it to mummify.
Glycerin would have kept her body from drying out too much, and
salicylic acid would have prevented the growth of fungi. According to
Melissa Williams, executive director of the American Society of
Embalmers, it was the zinc salts that were most responsible for
Rosalia’s amazing state of preservation. Zinc, which is no longer used
by embalmers in the United States, petrified Rosalia’s body. “[Zinc]
gave her rigidity. You could take her out of the casket, prop her up,
and she would stand by herself.”
2. King Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun
(approximately 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th
dynasty during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom.
Tutankhamun was 9 years old when he became pharaoh and reigned for
approximately 10 years, until his death. Tutankhamun’s tomb in the
Valley of the Kings (where he still resides) was discovered by Howard
Carter in 1922 almost completely intact — the most complete ancient
Egyptian royal tomb ever found. Eternal life was the main focus of all
Ancient Egyptians, which meant preserving the body forever. Egyptians
mummified bodies because they believed in an afterlife. Believing that
the afterlife was much like life in this world they had to preserve
their bodies so they would be able to use them after they die. Egyptian
culture believed the body was home in the afterlife to a person’s Ka, Ba
and Akh, without which it would be condemned to eternal wandering.
The
Ka was a less solid duplicate of the body. Without a physical body, the
soul had no place to dwell and became restless forever. The Ba was able
to leave the tomb and revisit the dead person’s haunts in the mortal
world. The Akh was the immortal soul that emerged when the Ka and the Ba
united after the deceased person passed judgement. The mummification
process lasted for a period of 70 days, applied to all classes of
Egyptians – rich or poor. The 70-day mummification process was as
follows: 15 days spent on cleansing and purification, 40 day drying
period and 15 days wrapping and bandaging. Tutankhamun has become one of
the most famous Egyptian mummies, his death mask becoming one of the
most iconic images of the world today. The cause of Tutankhamun’s death
is unclear and is still the root of much speculation.
1. Lady Dai (Xin Zhui)
In
1971 workers in China digging an air raid shelter near the city of
Changsha uncovered an enormous Han Dynasty-era tomb containing over
1,000 well-preserved artefacts, as well as “the most perfectly preserved
corpse ever found”. The tomb belonged to Xin Zhui, wife of the Marquis
of Han who died between 178–145 BC, around 50 years of age. Her body is
so well preserved that when found it was autopsied as if recently dead
and her skin was supple, limbs could be manipulated; hair and internal
organs were intact; remains of her last meal were found in her stomach
and type A blood still ran red in her veins. Examinations have revealed
that she suffered from parasites, lower back pain, clogged arteries, had
a massively damaged heart (an indication of heart disease brought on by
obesity, lack of exercise and an overly rich diet) and was overweight
at the time of her death.
The
‘mystery of Lady Dai’ has not yet been solved. Scientists believe
contributing to her remarkable preservation was the 22 dresses of silk
and hemp and 9 silk ribbons she was tightly wrapped in. Clothes filled
the coffin, which was perfectly sealed, keeping air out. There were
inner and outer tombs, which were more than 50 feet below the earth as
well as the four coffins she was buried in, each inside the other.
However, some scientists suspect the real key to her preservation lies
in the mysterious unidentified reddish liquid found in the coffin she
was discovered in. To intensify the mystery, two other tombs containing
bodies in a similar state of preservation have been found close to Lady
Dai – Sui Xiaoyuan and Ling Huiping. Her 2,000-year-old body is
currently housed in the Hunan Provincial Museum.
Source: http://terselubung.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-10-famous-mummified-bodies.html
Source: http://terselubung.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-10-famous-mummified-bodies.html
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