Exposed

A 7-member team attempted to summit Mexico's highest mountain, Pico de Orizaba, In 1959, but they were overtaken by an avalanche. Four of the climbers were killed, but only one body was recovered at the time. The bodies of 2 of the missing men have just been found during a recent expedition. Luis Espinoza, who has now been mourning the loss of his fellow climbers for 56 years, commented, "I'll be at peace if they are."

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Chinchorro change

Dating back 7,000 years – earlier than the Egyptians, the oldest mummies in the world are those of the Chinchorro, who lived along the coasts of northern Chile and southern Peru. Hundreds of them have been unearthed, with more being excavated regularly. Usually, the challenge is to conserve them after they are removed from their dry conditions under the desert sand. But these days, almost certainly due to climate change, they are deteriorating where they lay. Archaeologist Marcela Sepulveda of the Universidad de Tarapacá, observes, "When you excavate mummies you can see that degradation is already there."

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Buddha body

Now on temporary display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest is a Buddha statue recently found to contain the mummified remains of 12th c. Chinese Buddhist master Liuquan. His body was revealed by CT scan (IMAGES HERE), his abdominal cavity was determined to contain paper scraps with Chinese characters, and DNA analysis is being carried out on his bones.

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Gallagh guy

The male bog body of a 20-year-old known as Gallagh Man, who was killed in Iron Age between 470 and 120 B.C.E., is housed at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Discovered in Co. Galway in 1821, the mummy was not acquired by the Royal Irish Academy until 1829. By then it had greatly deteriorated, which is why it is in a relatively poor state of preservation today. The family who found it while digging their peat was reluctant to part with it:

An enterprising, if somewhat morbid family, the O’Kellys saw an opportunity to make some money. They re-buried the bog body and then charged visitors a small fee to excavate and view it. The remains soon became a macabre tourist attraction and the O’Kellys continued to exhume and re-inter the bog body for the next eight years.

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Mummified monk

The mummy of a monk seated in a lotus position and shrouded in the skin of a cow, horse, or camel was discovered on January 27th at an undisclosed location in Songinokhairkhan province, Mongolia, and transferred to Ulaanbataar National Centre of Forensic Expertise. Thus far, only a visual examination has been done and puts the mummy's age at 200 years, leading to speculation that he taught the well-known Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, a Buryat Buddhist of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition born in 1852. Itigilov was best known for the lifelike state of his body, suggesting that this monk (IMAGE ABOVE) or another mentor taught him well the practice of self-mummification.

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Minimummy

After 30 years of excavating a 300-acre Roman Era cemetery in Egypt, a team from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, U.S., has uncovered 1,700 of the million mummies it is estimated to contain. The inhabitants were not of high status and most mummified naturally and were buried without grave goods. Still, there are surprises and indications that families laid their loved ones out with care. Project Director Kerry Muhlestein and the other archaeologists found a man over 7' (2.1 m) tall, and describe the mummy of a child wrapped in a tunic wearing a necklace and 2 bracelets on each arm: "There was some evidence that they tried much of the full mummification process. The toes and toenails and brain and tongue were amazingly preserved."

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Minirdis' makeover

One of 30 ancient Egyptian mummies at Chicago’s Field Museum is being prepared for travel. Minirdis, the 14-year-old son of a priest who lived 2,500 years ago, has dates in Los Angeles and Denver as part of an upcoming exhibition, "Mummies: Images of the Afterlife." The specialists will repair the boy's shroud and mask (IMAGES HERE), which have been torn and twisted, and his feet (IMAGE ABOVE) which have been detached and partially unwrapped. As delicate as mummies are, conservator J.P. Brown reassures that this one won't crumble to dust as in the movies: “The last bit of Indiana Jones and all that. That’s not going to happen.”

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Worked turf

My friend Cathy surprised me the other day with more "show and tell" about Ireland. She recently came into possession of the 2 plaques above (TOP), and labels on the back indicate that they were handworked from Irish turf. Turf (peat) is harvested as fuel in Ireland, Scotland, England, Finland, and elsewhere. The partially decayed vegetation found in peatlands (including mires, fens, bogs, swamp forests, and moors) would – given enough time – become coal. But it can be burned long before that and is classified as a slowly renewable resource. Cathy brought me examples of turf in its dried (BOTTOM) and compressed (MIDDLE) states, the first time I had seen – in person – the material from which bog bodies emerge.

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Parlor props

"The hairs went up on the back of my neck when I walked into the drawing room. It stood out like a sore thumb," says Mark Stacey of Reeman Dansie auctioneers of the 3,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus he came across during a valuation of the contents of a home in Essex, U.K. While the mummy that it contained may have been "unrolled" in the 19th c. and subsequently disposed of, the sarcophagus is believed to have been acquired some 60 years ago and originally purchased from a museum that closed down. The find can be considered exceedingly rare except that it follows on the heels of a similar discovery by an auctioneer – also in Essex – of a 2,300-year-old Egyptian coffin that then sold (despite objections from Cairo) for £12,000 ($19,000) last month.

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Unmasked

Researcher Marleen De Meyer of the University of Leuven in Belgium was excavating Old Kingdom cave graves in Dayr al-Barsha, Egypt, when she turned over what she thought was a potsherd on the way to the storage tent. What she held in her hands was a rare 4,000-year-old death mask. Similar masks have long believed to have been modeled after the deceased, but the texturesof textile strips (IMAGE ABOVE, MORE HERE) suggested that the plaster had been applied to the face. But no traces of the face on the inside were visible, just clay. The archaeologists reasoned that the plaster mask was made and removed, then the body was mummified and clay applied to the face, after which the mask was pressed into that clay. They performed experimental archaeology, with a member of the team volunteering to be the corpse, and determined just that. They are now awaiting permission to carry out a CT scan of the artifact which will show the exact form of the ancient Egyptian's face sandwiched between the plaster and the clay.

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Egyptian extensions

In the ancient city once established as the capital of Egypt by the pharaoh Akhenaten during his reign ca. 1353-1335 B.C.E., archaeologists are excavating the cemetery as part of the Amarna Project. Of the 100 skulls recently unearthed, 28 still had their hair. Jolanda Bos (ABOVE) is leading the hairstyle analysis and has found that the residents were fond of braids, rings or curls around the ears, and possibły henna dye. Researchers don't know the name, age or occupation of one unmummified woman, but Bos has betrayed one of her secrets, stating that she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head."

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Egyptian embalmers

Researchers from the Universities of York, Macquarie, and Oxford have just overturned the accepted timeline of ancient Egyptian embalming. More than 10 years ago, Macquarie Egyptologist Jana Jones (IMAGE ABOVE) noticed embalming resins in the cloths found with bodies buried as early as 4100 B.C.E. in small cemeteries in a region of central Egypt known as Mostagedda. The team collected and analyzed about 150 samples of this linen and confirmed that they contained a base of fat or oil mixed with resin from pine trees, aromatic plant extracts, plant gum or sugar, and a natural petroleum – ingredients known to have both adhesive and antibacterial properties. Their research indicates that the early Egyptians understood the science that would later become the basis of true mummification 1,500 years before it is generally believed to have begun in the Old Kingdom. Jones exclaims, "The most surprising and probably most sensational finding was that there was no fundamental change in the recipe of the embalming mixtures used when pharaonic mummification was at its peak, some 2,500 to 3,000 years later!"

 

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Bog voyage

There is a breakthrough about bog bodies to report! Researcher Karin Margarita Frei of the National Museum of Denmark has disproven the long-held assumption that, because many bog bodies were gravely wounded and were buried instead of cremated, they were sacrificed criminals, commoners, or slaves. Frei has applied new chemical analyses to 2 Danish bog bodies – Huldremose Woman and Haraldskær Woman (IMAGE ABOVE) – to show that they had traveled long distances before their deaths and wore clothing that was more elaborate than previously thought. For instance, when Huldremose Woman was discovered in 1879, she wore a skirt and scarf of sheep's wool and 2 leather capes. Frei examined the body microscopically and showed that the mummy had worn flaxen undergarments. Analyzing the strontium isotope in the dissolved fabric and the skirt and scarf indicated that the flax had not grown on the terrain where the bog body had been found, but in areas of northern Scandinavia. Frei says of the Huldremose Woman, "At first we thought this must be a witch—now we think she's a very fine lady with expensive jewelry and expensive clothes and underwear."

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Preserved in what is now Peru

An international team of archaeologists led by Józef Szykulski of the University of Wrocław, in Poland, have discovered 150 mummies in the Tambo River delta in the northern region of the Atacama Desert in Peru (PHOTOS HERE). The naturally mummified remains date from the 4th to the 7th centuries A.D., predating the Tiwanaku and Inca civilizations by almost 500 years. The bodies had been buried wrapped in cotton veils, reed mats, and fishing nets accompanied by numerous grave goods:

• Quivers with bows and arrows tipped with obsidian heads
• Maces with stone or copper finials
• Weaving tools
• Copper and gold jewelry
• Decorated and intact pottery

Other then determining the identity of the pre-Columbian civilization, Szykulski comments, "We learned a lot about what equipment had been used, such as baskets and fishing nets, what these people were doing, which was agriculture and fishing, how they dressed, what ornaments they wore and even how they combed their hair."

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St. Bees IDs

A new study confirms the identity of the body buried with the St. Bees Man, who is known for being one of the most well-preserved archaeological bodies ever discovered. He was interred in a lead coffin within a vault at a priory in Cumbria, northern England, after having died in a crusade in 1368. After six centuries, his skin, nails, and internal organs were in near-perfect condition. He was autopsied after his 1981 excavation, and reburied after preservation of tissue samples. Traditionally, he would have been buried with his wife. But the knight was identified as Anthony de Lucy, and the woman in the vault next to him is newly revealed to be his sister Maud (SHOWN SHROUDED ABOVE), who died 30 years after he was killed. About their methods, the researchers write, "The strength of the osteobiographical approach lies in harnessing human remains to elucidate the individual’s role in past societies, how social change is reflected in their funerary treatment, and their active role in socio-political continuity or change. In such circumstances, the body and its treatment becomes an artefact of and canvas for symbolic and social expression."

 

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Reverse mummification

Forensic odontologist Alejandro Hernández Cárdenas of the Ciudad Juárez Forensic Science Laboratory has made a name for himself by rehydrating the bodies of the victims of crimes that go back yearś. It has become standard practice to inject glycerin into individual digits to reconstitute them for fingerprinting, but Hernández Cárdenas has developed a technique for reconstituting entire corpses. He immerses the bodies of the victims of violence in his Mexican border city that were stored or buried without being identified. His secret formula raises features on the skin including the prints, any tattoos or birthmarks, and lesions, and returns the internal organs almost to their condition at death. So far, his work has resulted in only a handful of identifications and solved crimes, and he tries to keep a low profile to be avoid becoming a target himself. But forensic scientists from around the world have taken note and he has applied for a patent. He began developing his formula in 2002, using ears and fingers from the lab that he placed in glass jars. When he arrived at work one morning, he found that one of the fingers had perfectly rehydrated and thought his co-workers were playing a trick on him. but he learned that his experiments had paid off when they assured him, “We don’t mess with your filthiness.”

 

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Mummy rubble

Bits and pieces of some 50 royal mummies dating from the reigns of the pharaohs Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III in the 14th c. B.C.E. have turned up after Egyptian and Swiss archaeologists finished sifting through a reopened tomb that was first discovered in 1899. The damage was done by tomb robbers in antiquity and in the 19th c. More than 30 of the dead are identified by name on inscribed pottery. "For us, the excavations are done. Our work is ahead in the lab, It actually wasn't the mummies themselves that interested us, as much as the materials and inscriptions that we found with them," says Egyptologist Susanne Bickel of the University of Basel, who will use that information and DNA to puzzle out the family relationships.

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Copper-plated mummies

In a burial ritual unknown to experts, several bodies from a medieval necropolis near the Arctic Circle in Siberia were found shrouded in copper. The naturally mummified remains had also been covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine, or bear fur, and outfitted with a wide range of grave goods (PHOTOS HERE). Genetic experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences will now try to determine from these bodies – none of whom are women – the identity of this mystery civilization.

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Overlooked ink

It wasn't until the staff of the British Museum reexamined 8 of the mummies in their collection for an upcoming exhibition that they discovered that one of them has a tattoo. The woman, aged between 20 and 35, lived on the banks of the Nile in what is now Sudan in 700 A.D. Her buried remains (IMAGES HERE) were found in 2005 and had mummified naturally. It was infra-red reflectography that clearly defined the tattoo on the skin of her right inner thigh, which is barely visible to the naked eye (IMAGE ABOVE). It is unknown whether the fashion of the day allowed the tattoo to be seen in public, but it read "M-I-X-A-H-A" which was deciphered as "Michael" in ancient Greek. A Christian symbol of the archangel featured in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the monogram may have been applied for protection. Curator of physical anthropology Daniel Antoine notes, “She is the first evidence of a tattoo from this period. This is a very rare find.”

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Misidentified mummy

A 500-year-old mummy housed in the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection is revealing some more of her secrets. Although no written records about her exist at the museum and she does not even have an accession number, she is believed to have been brought to Germany by a Bavarian princess c. 1898. For many years, however, it was assumed she was a European bog body. But the princess had recently been on an expedition to South America and researchers have now confirmed her origin. The material used to make the rope which tied her braids (IMAGE ABOVE) originated in South America, and her skull formation was typical of the Inca people. Stable isotope analysis of her bones and hair indicates that she had a diet rich in fish, which suggests that she lived near the Peruvian or Northern Chilean coastline. Blunt force trauma to the center of her face shows that she was – like a bog body – ritually killed. At 20, she was older than most sacrificial victims, but DNA analysis reveals yet another detail. "Present-day techniques offer such a wealth of information that we can reconstruct various aspects of past lives, diseases and death," notes study co-author paleopathologist Andreas Nerlich of Munich University. The researchers found that she suffered from a parasitic infection called Chagas disease, which would soon have taken her life if her killers hadn't.

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