The curse of the pharaohs and the mummies: how Egyptian Gothic arose. The most famous mummies in the world and their mysterious stories What does a mummified body look like?

On July 27, 1941, Lenin's body was taken out of the capital. The operation was kept in the strictest confidence. Then the body was returned to the Mausoleum again. It is curious that these are far from the only adventures of Ilyich after death. Mummification became a special burial ritual many thousands of years ago, but one way or another it has survived to this day. At the same time, mummies have always been and are surrounded by many secrets that excite the minds of both scientists and ordinary people. At the same time, some of the long-dead continue to “travel” around the world, the origin and mystery of the death of others have not yet been solved by scientists, others are cursed, and others have not undergone decomposition at all without outside intervention. We present to you the most famous mummies in the world and their mysterious stories.

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Vladimir Lenin. Now Lenin’s body is in the same place, where crowds of tourists still come to see it. But embalmed ashes, unlike Egyptian mummies, require constant care, for which at the end of 1939 a research laboratory was created at the Mausoleum as part of the USSR Ministry of Health.

The laboratory monitors the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere of the sarcophagus and body, changes the composition of impregnating solutions, checks the color of the mummy’s skin, as well as the volume of the face and hands, and its employees help Ilyich “take a bath.”

The work of unusual specialists was shown in the unique film of the NTV television company "Mausoleum".

Tutankhamun. Perhaps the pharaoh is the most famous mummy. Although, according to historians, during his life Tutankhamun did not stand out among other rulers in any way, it is with his tomb that the story of a terrible curse is connected.

In 1922, the Englishmen Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon found the tomb of Tutankhamun, untouched by robbers. Archaeologists opened the double coffin, revealing a golden sarcophagus inside. Even the flowers inside were well preserved, so their discovery was truly unique.

However, the joy quickly faded when a series of accidents befell the research team. Carnarvon died suddenly of pneumonia, followed by Carter's assistants, one after another.

Screaming mummies from the Guanajuato Museum. The Mexican Museum of Mummies is perhaps one of the most chilling places on earth: it displays 111 mummies, which are the naturally preserved mummified bodies of people who mostly died in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Between 1865 and 1958, there was a law that required relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones laid in graves in a cemetery. If the amount was not paid, the dead bodies were simply removed from the stone tombs - and this is how the museum appeared.

Screaming mummies are unusual in that their distorted faces indicate that the person was buried alive.

The Man from Grauballe. In the 1950s, archaeologists discovered several mummies in peat bogs. Among the fairly well-preserved bodies, scientists were especially surprised by the mummified body of a young man.

Even his facial features, framed by a shock of red hair, could easily be seen on him.

According to the results of the radiocarbon analysis, it became known that the young man lived in the very first years of our era, and they killed him by sacrificing him to the gods.

Mummy of a boy from Greenland. Not far from the northern settlement of Kilakitsoq on the western coast of the island, in 1972, scientists found a family of mummified Eskimo ancestors, whose bodies were preserved due to low temperatures.

Nine people died in Greenland during the Middle Ages. One of the mummies aroused particular interest among scientists and curiosity, seasoned with fear, among ordinary fans of such finds.

The body belonged to a one-year-old child who, as anthropologists concluded, suffered from Down syndrome. A mummy resembling a creepy doll leaves a lasting impression on visitors to the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk.

Rosalia Lombardo. A glass coffin containing the incorrupt body of a two-year-old girl is located in a small temple in Palermo.

Rosalia died of influenza in 1918. After her death, with the consent of her parents, the doctor gave her an injection, the contents of which are still unknown. Thanks to this, the body did not decompose.

Local residents even call the amazingly preserved mummy “sleeping beauty”, it seems so “alive”.

Around the church where Rosalia rests, according to parishioners and tourists, inexplicable things began to happen forty years ago.

One of the tourists even claimed that he saw the “sleeping beauty”’s eyes open for a moment and then close back. After this, church ministers refused to be alone near the incorruptible body.

Princess of Ukok. Although the body of this mummy itself is not well preserved, the curiosity of scientists and enthusiasts is aroused by the intricately outlined tattoos, which are perfectly preserved despite the fact that the princess died more than 2,500 years ago.

According to researchers, Ukoke was 25 years old at the time of his death. On her tattoo you can easily discern the outline of a mythical deer with the horns of a capricorn and the beak of a griffin.

Archaeologists believe that Princess Ukoka was a member of the Pazyryk tribe from the mountains of Siberia, whose representatives were convinced that tattoos helped people find each other in the afterlife.

Iceman Ötzi. The find became the oldest European mummy, dating back about 5,200 years. The body, named Ötzi, was discovered on September 19, 1991 by a pair of German tourists while hiking in the Tyrolean Alps.

Like Tutankhamun, the Iceman is credited with the deaths of six people. The first of them was the German tourist Helmut Simon, who decided to spend the 100 thousand dollars received for the find on a second trip to the place of discovery, where he was overtaken by death in the form of a snowstorm.

Tutankhamun Torquay. Nowadays, few people want a mummy to be made from their body after death, but there are exceptions.

Allan Billis voluntarily decided to have his body mummified, and also approved in advance the broadcast of the process on television.

The 61-year-old taxi driver, who died of lung cancer in 2011, was nicknamed “Tutankham of Torquay” by journalists.

Dr. Stefan Buckley mummified Billis' corpse using the same technique used to embalm Tutankhamun. Thus Allan became the first body in more than 1000 years to be processed in this way.

Tarim mummies. In the desert areas of the Tarim Basin in China at the beginning of the 20th century, human remains were found, notable for the fact that they belonged to Europeans.

Presumably, these people passed away in the 17th century BC. It is surprising that almost all of them had long blond or red hair, which they wore in braids, and they were wearing felt cloaks and leggings with a checkered pattern.

One of the famous Tarim mummies was the so-called Loulan Beauty - a young woman about 180 cm tall with light brown hair. According to scientists, the woman lived 3800 years ago.

The woman's mummy can be seen in the Urumqi Museum. Next to it they found the burial of a 50-year-old man with his hair braided in two braids and a three-month-old child with a bottle made from a cow's horn and a pacifier from a sheep's udder.

Xin Zhui. In 1971, the mummy of a wealthy Han Dynasty Chinese woman who died in 168 BC was found in Changsha, China. at the age of 50 years.

The body was placed in four sarcophagi according to the “matryoshka” principle, and the body itself was in 80 liters of yellowish liquid, which immediately evaporated.

Thanks to the mysterious filler, the joints of the body retained mobility and the muscles were elastic. Many different items were discovered near the deceased, including recipes for her favorite dishes.

Franklin Expedition Mummies. In 1845, an expedition led by John Franklin of more than 100 people set out in search of the legendary route to Asia, but two ships simply went missing.

In 1850, the graves of three members of the missing crew were discovered on Beechey Island, after which the search was stopped.

Only in 1984 did a group of anthropologists go to the island. Oddly enough, all three bodies were perfectly preserved without any external intervention.

Researchers found traces of pneumonia and tuberculosis, as well as a very large amount of lead, which could have killed the sailors.

Donsella. The amazingly preserved body of a 15-year-old Inca woman was found at the top of the Argentine volcano Llullaillaco, located at an altitude of 6,700 m above sea level.

Together with two other children, the girl was most likely sacrificed, leaving her at the top. Scientists have found that during her lifetime, Donsella suffered from a disease similar to tuberculosis.

In those days, such illnesses could well lead to death, but the cause of the girl’s death was hypothermia.

It's amazing how well the body is preserved without any special treatments.

Eva Peron. The residents of the country simply idolized the wife of Argentine President Juan Peron, but on July 26, 1952, at the age of 33, Evita died of cancer.

It is not surprising that the doctors were instructed to embalm the body of the deceased so that those who wish could see their favorite after her death.

In 1955, Evita's body was stolen by her husband's opponents and disappeared for 15 years.

When Peron managed to remarry, Evita's body was returned to him. True, marks caused by a blunt object were found on the mummy’s face, and a finger was missing from his hand.

Peron and his new wife, oddly enough, decided to keep Eva's mummy at home. It is even known that the second wife of the president combed Eva’s hair every day and sat the corpse at the dinner table. It was even rumored that the woman lay down in the coffin next to the deceased, “hoping to absorb part of Evita’s magical energy.” Today the body of the first wife is buried in the family crypt.

Khambo Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov. The Buryat monk died in 1927, and on September 11, 2002, his body was exhumed.

The body was buried in a cedar box, covered with salt. Eyewitnesses claim that Itigelov had soft skin without any signs of decay; his nose, ears, and eyes were preserved.

When the capital's scientists received pieces of his body for research, they were forced to admit that the body of the Buddhist lama was still alive... Science cannot yet explain this phenomenon.

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, reading on the veranda of Howard Carter's house. Circa 1923 Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

On April 5, 1923, George Carnarvon, a British aristocrat and amateur Egyptologist who financed archaeologist Howard Carter's excavations in the Valley of the Kings, died at the Continental Savoy in Cairo. They talked about an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances: a mosquito bite and the subsequent careless gesture with a razor, and then blood poisoning, pneumonia and death, which caused real panic among the Cairo elite. Of course: barely all the world's newspapers had time to report on the unique discovery in the Valley of the Kings - the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, preserved almost in its original form - when one of the main characters of the event dies in the prime of life, at the age of 56. Unlike many other tombs that were plundered already in the 19th century, only ancient Egyptian thieves visited the tomb of Tutankhamun, leaving behind a lot of valuables. Correspondents familiarly called the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty the Boy Pharaoh or simply Tut. The story of the discovery itself was amazing: for seven years Howard Carter, financed by Carnarvon, dug up the Valley of the Kings in search of an unlooted tomb - and only in November 1922, when Carnarvon was about to stop funding, did he discover one.

Then the devilry began: Egyptologist and Daily Mail correspondent Arthur Weigall, who covered the story from the very beginning, wrote that Carter’s bird was eaten by a cobra, a symbol of the pharaoh’s power, shortly after the opening of the tomb. They also said that Carnarvon’s dog died at the same time in his family estate, Highclere (today better known from the TV series “Downton Abbey”). Upon learning of Carnarvon's death, readers quickly correlated one with the other - and the curse of the tomb became a reality. Weigall, who in every possible way denied its existence, died in 1934 at the age of 54 and was willingly listed among the victims of the tomb.

Funeral mask of Tutankhamun. Photo from 1925

Howard Carter, Arthur Callender and an Egyptian worker in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun's tomb. 1924© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Objects found in the tomb. 1922© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Howard Carter and Arthur Callender wrap the statue before transport. 1923© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Bust of the goddess Mehurt and chests in the treasury of Tutankhamun's tomb. 1926© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Howard Carter examines the inner coffin, made of solid gold. 1925© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Ceremonial bed in the shape of a Celestial Cow and other items in the tomb. 1922© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Howard Carter examines the lid of the second (middle) coffin in the tomb's burial chamber. 1925© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Arthur Mace and Alfred Lucas examine one of the chariots found in the tomb. 1923© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Alabaster vases in the tomb. 1922© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

An ark with a statue of the god Anubis on the threshold of the treasury. 1926© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

Howard Carter, Arthur Callender and workers in the burial chamber. 1923© Harry Burton / Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, colored by Dynamicchrome

The media hysteria around Tutankhamun was also explained by the fact that reporters that year did not have many high-profile topics to discuss. The summer was so scant for news that a story about a farmer who grew gooseberries the size of an apple tree made the front pages of leading publications. In addition, Carnarvon sold exclusive rights to cover the opening of the tomb to The Times newspaper, which caused a storm of protests from other reporters and only exacerbated the race for sensations. One of the American shipping companies even introduced additional flights to Egypt so that all interested tourists could quickly get to Luxor. As a result, Carter was so tormented by the press and onlookers besieging the excavations that one day he even blurted out in his hearts: “It would be better if I had not found this tomb at all!”

Despite the fact that no curse messages were found either at the entrance to the tomb or in the burial room, the legend continued to circulate and only gained momentum when someone in any way connected with the tomb died. The number of alleged "victims of the curse" varies from 22 to 36 people; however, according to data published in The British Medical Journal, the average age of those who died was 70 years. “Tutmania,” as they said then, also swept the film industry - in 1932, the film “The Mummy” was released with the main actor of horror films, Boris Karloff.

According to popular belief, it was the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb that began the legends of curses that were later capitalized on by science fiction writers and Hollywood. However, given this explanation, what is surprising is the readiness with which educated Europeans throughout the first half of the 20th century spread incredible stories about mummies and pharaohs. In reality, this was because by 1923, scary tales of vengeful mummies and ancient Egyptian curses had been part of popular Orientalist folklore for more than a century.

A still from the series "Agatha Christie's Poirot." 1993 In Agatha Christie's story "The Secret of the Egyptian Tomb", which plays on the story of Tutankhamun, the only person who does not take the curse seriously is the experienced and cynical detective Hercule Poirot. ITV

On July 21, 1798, French troops met the Mamluk army in the shadow of the Great Pyramids of Giza, a testament to the greatness of the Old Kingdom. The prologue to the Battle of the Pyramids is considered to be the famous monologue of Napoleon Bonaparte:

“Soldiers! You came to these lands to wrest them from barbarism, bring civilization to the East and save this beautiful part of the world from the English yoke. We will fight. Know that forty centuries are looking at you from the heights of these pyramids.”

Despite the fact that the Egyptian campaign ended for Bonaparte with defeat at Aboukir, the triumph of the British fleet and Admiral Nelson personally, Napoleon’s adventure was a success - but not military, but scientific. Not only soldiers, but also a whole army of scientists—167 people—went with him to the banks of the Nile: the best French mathematicians, chemists, physicists, geologists, historians, artists, biologists and engineers. On the spot they founded the main scientific institution of those times for the study of Egypt - Institut d'Égypte. Under his auspices, a series of publications called “Description de l’Égypte” was published, from which many Europeans first learned about the great history of ancient civilization. The British also developed a taste for Egyptian antiquities, who, after the victory in Aboukir, received many French trophies, including the famous Rosetta Stone A stone slab found by a French captain in 1799 in Egypt, near the city of Rosetta. Three identical texts are engraved on the slab: one is written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the other in ancient Greek, and the third in demotic script, the cursive script of Ancient Egypt. By comparing them, linguists were able to decipher the hieroglyphs for the first time.. Obelisks, elegant statues of gods and pharaohs, funerary and ritual objects left Egypt on French and British ships. Excavations, not regulated by any authorities, bordering on vandalism, created an extensive market for the trade in antiquities - before they even appeared on the market, the best exhibits immediately ended up in the private collections of wealthy aristocrats in London and Paris.

In 1821, the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, better known as the Tomb of Belzoni, in honor of the archaeologist and traveler Giovanni Belzoni, who was responsible for the discovery in 1817, was recreated in a theater near Piccadilly. During the show, the attraction was visited by thousands of Londoners. The English poet Horace Smith, who competed with the poet Shelley in writing sonnets dedicated to the Nile, composed “Address to the Mummy” - it was publicly read at the exhibition.

Unwrapping mummies imported from Egypt became a popular social pastime in the 1820s. Invitations to such events looked like this: “Lord Londesborough at Home: A Mummy from Thebes to be unrolled at half-past Two.”

Invitation to unwrapping the mummy. 1850 UCL Institute of Archeology

Real surgeons were responsible for the technical part of the performance. Thomas Pettigrew, nicknamed The Mummy, was considered the main expert in the field of mummy unwrapping. Pettigrew has publicly unwrapped more than 30 mummies throughout his illustrious career.

In 1824, the architect of the Bank of England, Sir John Soane, bypassed the British Museum and bought the elegant alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I for 2,000 pounds (the mummy was found only in 1881).

Sarcophagus of Seti I at Sir John Soane House Museum Sir John Soane's Museum, London

On the occasion of the purchase, Soane threw a large-scale soiree: for three evenings, in a room furnished with oil lamps for greater effect, representatives of the London establishment raised their glasses to Seti I. It got to the point that entire alleys in cemeteries were decorated in the style of the Luxor Valley of the Kings. In the Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise, opened by order of Napoleon in 1804, today you can see several outstanding examples of Egyptomania, in particular the graves of members of the Napoleonic expedition - mathematicians Joseph Fourier and Gaspard Monge. Not far from them stands the obelisk of Jean François Champollion, the young French genius who deciphered the Rosetta Stone in 1822 and laid the foundation for Egyptology.

Grave of Gaspard Monge at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Engraving from the book “Manuel et itinéraire du curieux dans le cimetière du Père la Chaise”. 1828 Wikimedia Commons

In England, the funerary fashion for Ancient Egypt is best seen at Highgate Cemetery, opened in 1839. Highgate's Egyptian Avenue has 16 crypts - eight on each side. The entrance to the avenue is decorated with a massive arch framed by large columns in the spirit of the Karnak Temple and two Egyptian obelisks. In the 1820s and 30s, obelisks began to appear on the graves of people who had nothing to do with Egypt - and quickly became an integral part of the Victorian cemetery landscape.

Egyptian Alley at Highgate Cemetery. 19th century engraving Friends of Highgate Cemetery

The appearance of Egyptian symbols in European cemeteries is not surprising - almost all the knowledge about Ancient Egypt that scientists and ordinary people had was related to the topic of death: from the construction of tombs and pyramids they learned about the afterlife of the Egyptians, temples told about gods and mythology. Very little was known about the life and everyday life of ordinary people. It turned out that Ancient Egypt was a civilization of great pharaohs and their priests. Hence the mystification, the feeling of mystery and sacredness surrounding Ancient Egypt and everything connected with it.

Despite the fact that the townspeople went in droves and without any fear to look at the mummified bodies of the ancient Egyptians, already in the 1820s the first fears and concerns began to appear. They were reflected in literary works that historians would later call Egyptian Gothic. The first author in this genre was Jane Webb-Ludon. Inspired by London's Egyptomania and Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, she wrote the Gothic horror film The Mummy! "

In addition to being one of the first science fiction writers (the book takes place in the 22nd century in a world filled with incredible technologies, one of which looks suspiciously like the Internet), she also came up with the image of a vengeful mummy. True, in the book of Loudon, the revenge of a mummy named Cheops takes the form of personal revenge rather than a terrible curse that can befall anyone.

Imperial paranoia only fueled the superstitious horror of ancient Egyptian secrets. At the same time, a curious process of adapting the exotic genre to classic Victorian Gothic took place: revived mummies walked through gloomy old mansions with creaking floorboards. However, the very appearance of the mummy in the context of an English mansion looked quite plausible: the British who visited Egypt often brought similar artifacts to their home - to their home museums. In the 1860s, another hybrid genre appeared - ghost stories in an Egyptian setting, such as An Egyptian Ghost Story about ghosts in a Coptic monastery. In the short story “The Story of Balbrow Manor,” published in 1898, an English vampire ghost takes possession of the body of a mummy brought by the owner of the house from Egypt and begins to terrorize the household.

By the end of the 19th century, the political and economic situation in Egypt had noticeably deteriorated. The exorbitant spending of Khedive Ismail, as well as the unjustified trust that the Khedive placed in his European “advisers,” gradually brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. First, in 1875, British Prime Minister Disraeli made the “purchase of the century” with the money of the London Rothschilds - a 47% stake in the Suez Canal - and a year later the British and the French established financial control over Egypt and created the Egyptian Debt Fund. In 1882, Great Britain, having suppressed a powerful uprising of the Egyptian officers, occupied the country of the pharaohs.

Illustration for the novel "Pharos the Egyptian" from The Windsor Magazine. 1898 Project Gutenberg

At the same time, archaeologists are making stunning discoveries in the Theban necropolis. Egypt is becoming even closer to the average person, reading daily newspapers and attending public lectures and salons. It was during this period that Egyptian Gothic experienced a real heyday. In 1898-1899, the novel “Pharos the Egyptian” by Guy Boothby, a close friend of Rudyard Kipling, was published. According to the plot, Pharos is Ptahmes, the high priest of the 19th dynasty pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramses II, taking revenge on the English who desecrated his land. The anti-colonial motive (or rather, the fear of it) is felt throughout the entire story. In particular, in the episode about the mummy that the protagonist’s father took from Egypt at one time, the following words appear: “Oh, my friend from the 19th century, your father stole me from my native land and from the grave that was prescribed for me by the gods. But beware, for punishment is pursuing you and will soon overtake you.”

A cunning (and probably immortal) priest, dressed as an ordinary Londoner, lures a good-natured Englishman to Egypt, where he infects him with the plague. An unsuspecting European sails back to England - as a result, millions die from the epidemic. But before that, Pharos gives his victim a tour of the English Parliament and private clubs, showing him the corruption of the elite. The amazing plot combines all the hidden fears of a resident of the empire, including the fear of catching a terrible disease in the East - it is no coincidence that a quarantine was established in Port Said for ships traveling to Britain. By an amazing coincidence, the mummy of the real Merneptah was found by archaeologists in 1898, when the author of the novel Boothby was on vacation in Egypt.

First edition of Richard Marsh's book The Scarab. 1897

From the writings of Egyptian Gothic, one gets the feeling that the elite were most afraid of the revenge of the rebel mummies and pharaohs: in Richard Marsh’s book “The Scarab”, an ancient Egyptian creature that does not have a specific form attacks a member of the British Parliament. Actually, the responsibility of the political elites for establishing the occupation, and later the protectorate, was indisputable - hence the fear of retribution that would overtake them first.

The book was published in the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula and significantly outsold it. Perhaps it was the success of a competitor that inspired Bram Stoker to write his other novel, The Curse of the Mummy, or the Stone of the Seven Stars, which tells the story of how a young lawyer tries to revive the mummy of the Egyptian Queen Thera (in 1971, it was made into the film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb ").

Stories about the deadly mummies of Egyptian queens and priestesses gradually moved from the literary genre into the category of popular superstitions - and, conversely, superstitions fueled literature. So, for several years, a real drama unfolded in the British Museum with a sarcophagus with the unremarkable serial number EA 22542.

Cover of Pearson's Magazine featuring the story of the "unlucky mummy". 1909 Wikimedia Commons

The story, overgrown with rumors and fiction, dates back to 1889, when the British Museum received a sarcophagus from a private collector. Upon examination, it became clear that it belonged to a wealthy woman. Egyptologist Wallis Budge, then working in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, identified her in the museum catalog as a priestess of Amun-Ra, presumably of the XXI or XXII dynasty. Despite the fact that the sarcophagus was empty, everyone persistently talked about the mummy and spread strange stories: they say that the British man who bought it in Egypt shot himself in the hand, after which he gave the mummy to his friend - her fiancé soon left her, then she fell ill and died mother, and soon she herself fell ill. After which the “unlucky mummy,” as she was called, ended up in the British Museum. In the museum, the machinations of the mummy did not stop - they said that various unpleasant incidents happened to the photographers who photographed her. The journalist who wrote about it, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, died three years after publication - he was 36 years old. Robinson's close friend Arthur Conan Doyle immediately stated that he was the victim of the mummy's curse. There were even rumors that the museum decided to get rid of the mummy and sent it as a gift to the Metropolitan on the Titanic liner in 1912 - although the sarcophagus has not left the building on Great Russell Street all these years, and can still be viewed today in Hall No. 62 (since the “unlucky mummy” is still popular with the public, sometimes the sarcophagus is taken to temporary exhibitions). By the way, the creator of Sherlock Holmes made his contribution not only to the formation of the legend of the “unlucky mummy”, but also to the genre of Egyptian Gothic: in 1890 he released the short story “The Ring of Thoth”, in which an Egyptologist, who fell asleep while working in the Louvre, discovers himself locked up with mummies and the almost immortal priest of Osiris Sosra. In another Doyle story, “Lot Number 249,” published two years later, a mummy attacks Oxford students: it turns out that she is acting on the orders of one of the students.

Thus, by the 1920s, legends of deadly mummies and curses of the pyramids were firmly entrenched among other popular European ideas about Egypt. So when, in 1923, reporters began reporting that members of the Carter expedition and those involved in the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb were dying one after another, an explanation was quickly found that would appeal to Daily Mail readers. The public, familiar with the stories of Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, if they did not believe in the curse, then willingly discussed it - it was not mummies that came to life, but plots familiar from childhood.

Historians have tried to count how many stories and novels about mummies and curses were published during the entire colonial period before the outbreak of the First World War - it turned out to be something like a hundred. However, Egyptian Gothic was not limited to literature - it created a whole set of rather dubious ideas about Ancient Egypt that continue to be broadcast in pop culture to this day.

Sources

• Beynon M. London's Curse: Murder, Black Magic and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End.
• Brier B. Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs.
• Bulfin A. The Fiction of Gothic Egypt and British Imperial Paranoia: The Curse of the Suez Canal.

  English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920. Vol. 54. No. 4. 2011.

• Day J The Mummy's Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World.
• Hankey J. A Passion for Egypt: Arthur Weigall, Tutankhamun and the “Curse of the Pharaohs”.

  L., N. Y., 2007.

• Luckhurst R. The Mummy's Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy.
• Riggs C. Unwrapping Ancient Egypt.

Some people live even after death. Swamps, deserts, and permafrost present surprises to scientists and sometimes preserve bodies unchanged for many centuries. We will tell you about the most interesting finds that amaze not only with their appearance and age, but also with their tragic fates.

Loulan beauty 3800 years old

In the vicinity of the Tarim River and the Taklamakan Desert - in places where the Great Silk Road ran - over the past quarter century, archaeologists have found more than 300 mummies of white people. Tarim mummies are tall, have blond or red hair, and blue eyes, which is not typical for the Chinese.

According to different versions of scientists, these could be both Europeans and our ancestors from Southern Siberia - representatives of the Afanasyev and Andronovo cultures. The oldest mummy was perfectly preserved and was named Loulan Beauty: this young woman of model height (180 cm) with neat braids of flaxen hair lay in the sands for 3800 years.

It was found in the vicinity of Loulan in 1980, buried nearby was a 50-year-old man, two meters tall, and a three-month-old child with an ancient “bottle” made of a cow’s horn and a teat made from a sheep’s udder. Tamir mummies well preserved due to the arid desert climate and the presence of salts.

Princess Ukok 2500 years old

In 1993, Novosibirsk archaeologists exploring the Ak-Alakha mound on the Ukok plateau discovered the mummy of a girl about 25 years old. The body lay on its side, legs bent. The deceased's clothes were well preserved: a Chinese silk shirt, a woolen skirt, a fur coat and felt stockings.

The appearance of the mummy testified to the peculiar fashion of those times: a horsehair wig was put on his shaved head, his arms and shoulders were covered with numerous tattoos. In particular, on the left shoulder was depicted a fantastic deer with the beak of a griffin and the horns of a capricorn - a sacred Altai symbol.

All signs pointed to the burial belonging to the Scythian Pazyryk culture, widespread in Altai 2500 years ago. The local population demands to bury the girl, whom the Altaians call Ak-Kadyn (White Lady), and journalists call the Princess of Ukok.

They claim that the mummy guarded the “mouth of the earth” - the entrance to the underground kingdom, which now that it is in the Anokhin National Museum remains open, and it is for this reason that natural disasters have occurred in the Altai Mountains in the last two decades. According to the latest research by Siberian scientists, Princess Ukok died of breast cancer.

Tollund Man over 2300 years old

In 1950, residents of the Danish village of Tollund were extracting peat in a bog and at a depth of 2.5 m they discovered the corpse of a man with signs of violent death. The corpse looked fresh, and the Danes immediately reported it to the police. However, the police had already heard about the swamp people (the bodies of ancient people were repeatedly found on the peat bogs of Northern Europe) and turned to scientists.

Soon the Tollund Man (as he was later called) was taken in a wooden box to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. The study revealed that this 40-year-old man, 162 cm tall, lived in the 4th century BC. e. and died from strangulation. Not only his head was perfectly preserved, but also his internal organs: liver, lungs, heart and brain.

Now the head of the mummy is on display in the Silkeborg city museum with the body of a mannequin (his own has not been preserved): stubble and tiny wrinkles can be seen on the face. This is the best-preserved man from the Iron Age: he looks as if he had not died, but fallen asleep. In total, more than 1,000 ancient people were discovered in the peat bogs of Europe.

Ice maiden 500 years

In 1999, on the border of Argentina and Chile, the body of a teenage girl from the Inca tribe was found in the ice of the Llullaillaco volcano at an altitude of 6706 m - she looked as if she had died a couple of weeks ago. Scientists have determined that this girl, 13–15 years old, who was called the Ice Maiden, was killed with a blunt blow to the head half a millennium ago, as a victim of a religious ritual.

Thanks to the low temperature, her body and hair were perfectly preserved, along with clothes and religious objects - bowls with food, figurines made of gold and silver, and an unusual headdress made of white feathers of an unknown bird were found nearby. The bodies of two more Inca victims were also discovered - a girl and a boy aged 6–7 years.

During the study, scientists found that children were prepared for the cult for a long time, fed with elite products (llama meat and maize), and stuffed with cocaine and alcohol. According to historians, the Incas chose the most beautiful children for rituals. Doctors diagnosed the Ice Maiden with the initial stage of tuberculosis. Mummies of Incan children are on display at the Museum of Highlands Archeology in Salta, Argentina.

Petrified miner about 360 years old

In 1719, Swedish miners discovered the body of their colleague deep in a mine in the city of Falun. The young man looked as if he had died recently, but none of the miners could identify him. A lot of onlookers came to look at the deceased, and in the end the corpse was identified: an elderly woman bitterly recognized him as her fiancé, Mats Israelsson, who had gone missing 42 years ago (!).

In the open air, the corpse became hard as stone - such properties were given to it by the vitriol that soaked the miner's body and clothes. The miners did not know what to do with the find: whether to consider it a mineral and give it to a museum, or bury it as a person. As a result, the Petrified Miner was put on display, but over time began to deteriorate and decompose due to the evaporation of vitriol.

In 1749, Mats Israelsson was buried in the church, but in the 1860s, during renovations, the miner was dug up again and shown to the public for another 70 years. It was only in 1930 that the petrified miner finally found peace in the church cemetery in Falun. The fate of the failed groom and his bride formed the basis of Hoffmann’s story “Falun Mines.”

Conqueror of the Arctic 189 years

In 1845, an expedition led by polar explorer John Franklin set out on two ships to the northern coast of Canada to explore the Northwest Passage, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

All 129 people disappeared without a trace. During search operations in 1850, three graves were discovered on Beechey Island. When they were finally opened and the ice was melted (this happened only in 1981), it turned out that the bodies were perfectly preserved due to permafrost conditions.

A photograph of one of the deceased - British fireman John Torrington, originally from Manchester - spread across all publications in the early 1980s and inspired James Taylor to write the song The Frozen Man. Scientists have determined that the fireman died of pneumonia aggravated by lead poisoning.

Sleeping Beauty 96 years old

Palermo in Sicily is home to one of the most famous mummies exhibitions - the Capuchin Catacombs. Since 1599, the Italian elite have been buried here: clergy, aristocracy, politicians. They rest in the form of skeletons, mummies and embalmed bodies - more than 8,000 dead in total. The last to be buried was the girl Rosalia Lombardo.

She died of pneumonia in 1920, seven days short of her second birthday. The grief-stricken father asked the famous embalmer Alfredo Salafia to preserve her body from decay. Almost a hundred years later, the girl, like a sleeping beauty, lies with her eyes slightly open in the chapel of St. Rosalia. Scientists recognize that this is one of the best embalming methods.

You've probably all watched horror films about revived mummies attacking people. These sinister dead have always captured the human imagination. However, in reality, mummies do not carry anything terrible, representing incredible archaeological value. In this issue you will find 13 real mummies that have survived to this day and are among the most significant archaeological finds of our time.

A mummy is the body of a dead creature specially treated with a chemical substance, in which the process of tissue decomposition is slowed down. Mummies are stored for hundreds and even thousands of years, becoming a “window” into the ancient world. On the one hand, mummies look creepy, some people get goosebumps just looking at these wrinkled bodies, but on the other hand, they are of incredible historical value, containing interesting information about the life of the ancient world, customs, health and diet of our ancestors .

1. Screaming mummy from the Guanajuato Museum

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico is one of the strangest and most terrible in the world, with 111 mummies collected here, which are the naturally preserved mummified bodies of people, most of whom died in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and were buried in the local cemetery " Pantheon of St. Paula.

The museum's exhibits were exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, the relatives lost the right to the burial site and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery. Distorted facial expressions on some mummies indicate they were buried alive.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where they were kept. The official date of establishment of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when mummies were exhibited in glass shelves. Now the museum is visited annually by hundreds of thousands of tourists.

2. Mummy of a boy from Greenland (Kilakitsoq town)

Near the Greenlandic settlement of Qilakitsoq, located on the western coast of the largest island in the world, an entire family was discovered in 1972, mummified by low temperatures. Nine perfectly preserved bodies of the ancestors of the Eskimos, who died in Greenland at a time when the Middle Ages reigned in Europe, aroused keen interest of scientists, but one of them became famous throughout the world and beyond the scientific framework.

Belonging to a one-year-old child (as anthropologists found, who suffered from Down syndrome), it, more like some kind of doll, makes an indelible impression on visitors to the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk.

3. Two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo

The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy, is an eerie place, a necropolis that attracts tourists from all over the world with many mummified bodies in varying states of preservation. But the symbol of this place is the baby face of Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died of pneumonia in 1920. Her father, unable to cope with grief, turned to the famous physician Alfredo Salafia with a request to preserve his daughter’s body.

Now it makes the hair on the head of all visitors to the dungeons of Palermo, without exception, move - amazingly preserved, peaceful and so alive that it seems as if Rosalia only dozed off briefly, it makes an indelible impression.

4. Juanita from the Peruvian Andes

Either still a girl, or already a girl (the age of death is said to be from 11 to 15 years), named Juanita, gained worldwide fame, being included in the ranking of the best scientific discoveries according to Time magazine due to its preservation and eerie history, which after the discovery of the mummy in the ancient scientists told about the Inca settlement in the Peruvian Andes in 1995. Sacrificed to the gods in the 15th century, it has survived to this day in almost perfect condition thanks to the ice of the Andean peaks.

As part of the exhibition of the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in the city of Arequipa, the mummy often goes on tour, exhibited, for example, at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington or at many venues in the Land of the Rising Sun, which is generally distinguished by a strange love for mummified bodies.

5. Knight Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz, Germany

This German knight lived from 1651 to 1702. After his death, his body turned into a mummy naturally and is now on display for everyone to see.

According to legend, the knight Kalbutz was a great fan of taking advantage of the “right of the first night.” The loving Christian had 11 of his own children and about three dozen bastards. In July 1690, he declared his “right of the first night” regarding the young bride of a shepherd from the town of Buckwitz, but the girl refused him, after which the knight killed her newly-made husband. Taken into custody, he swore before the judges that he was not guilty, otherwise “after death his body will not crumble into dust.”

Since Kalbutz was an aristocrat, his word of honor was enough to get him acquitted and released. The knight died in 1702 at the age of 52 and was buried in the von Kalbutze family tomb. In 1783, the last representative of this dynasty died, and in 1794, restoration work was started in the local church, during which the tomb was opened in order to rebury all the dead of the von Kalbutz family in a regular cemetery. It turned out that all of them, except Christian Friedrich, had decayed. The latter turned into a mummy, which proved the fact that the loving knight was still an oathbreaker.

The mummy shown in the photo belongs to Pharaoh Ramses II (Ramses the Great), who died in 1213 BC. e. and is one of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs. It is believed that he was the ruler of Egypt during the campaign of Moses. One of the distinctive features of this mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set, the patron of royal power.

In 1974, Egyptologists discovered that the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II was rapidly deteriorating. It was decided to immediately fly it to France for examination and restoration, for which the mummies were issued a modern Egyptian passport, and in the “occupation” column they wrote “king (deceased).” At the Paris airport, the mummy was greeted with all the military honors due to the visit of the head of state.

Mummy of a girl aged 18-19, buried in Denmark in 1300 BC. e. The deceased was a tall, slender girl with long blond hair styled in an intricate updo, somewhat reminiscent of a 1960s babette. Her expensive clothes and jewelry suggest that she belonged to a family of the local elite.

The girl was buried in an oak coffin lined with herbs, so her body and clothes were surprisingly well preserved. The preservation would have been even better if the layer of soil above the grave had not been damaged several years before this mummy was discovered.

Similaun Man, who was about 5,300 years old at the time of his discovery, making him the oldest European mummy, was nicknamed Ötzi by scientists. Discovered on September 19, 1991 by a couple of German tourists while walking in the Tyrolean Alps, who came across the perfectly preserved remains of an inhabitant of the Chalcolithic era thanks to natural ice mummification, it created a real sensation in the scientific world - nowhere in Europe have the bodies of our distant people been found perfectly preserved to this day ancestors

Now this tattooed mummy can be seen in the archaeological museum of Bolzano, Italy. Like many other mummies, Ötzi is allegedly shrouded in a curse: over the course of several years, under various circumstances, several people died, one way or another connected with the study of the Iceman.

The Girl from Yde (Dutch: Meisje van Yde) is the name given to the well-preserved body of a teenage girl discovered in a peat bog near the village of Yde in the Netherlands. This mummy was found on May 12, 1897. The body was wrapped in a woolen cape.

A woven wool noose was tied around the girl’s neck, indicating that she had been executed for some crime or had been sacrificed. There is a trace of a wound in the collarbone area. The skin was not affected by decomposition, which is typical for swamp bodies.

The results of radiocarbon dating carried out in 1992 showed that she died at about 16 years of age between 54 BC. e. and 128 AD e. The corpse's head was half shaved shortly before death. The preserved hair is long and has a reddish tint. But it should be noted that the hair of all corpses that fall into a swampy environment acquires a reddish color as a result of denaturalization of the coloring pigment under the influence of acids found in the swampy soil.

A computed tomography scan determined that during her lifetime she had a curvature of the spine. Further research led to the conclusion that the cause of this was most likely damage to the vertebrae by bone tuberculosis.

Rendswühren Man, who also belongs to the so-called swamp people, was found near the German city of Kiel in 1871. At the time of death, the man was between 40 and 50 years old, and examinations of the body showed that he died from a blow to the head.

The superbly preserved mummy of Seti I and the remains of the original wooden coffin were discovered in the Deir el-Bahri cache in 1881. Seti I ruled Egypt from 1290 to 1279. BC e. The mummy of this pharaoh was buried in a specially prepared tomb.

Seti is a minor character in the science fiction films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, where he is depicted as a pharaoh who falls victim to a plot by his high priest, Imhotep.

The mummy of this woman, nicknamed the Altai Princess, was found by archaeologists in 1993 on the Ukok plateau and is one of the most significant discoveries in archeology of the late 20th century. Researchers believe that the burial was made in the 5th-3rd centuries BC and dates back to the period of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.

During the excavations, archaeologists discovered that the deck in which the body of the buried woman was placed was filled with ice. That is why the woman’s mummy is well preserved. The burial was walled up in a layer of ice. This aroused great interest among archaeologists, since very ancient things could be well preserved in such conditions. In the chamber they found six horses with saddles and harnesses, as well as a wooden larch block nailed with bronze nails. The contents of the burial clearly indicated the nobility of the buried person.

The mummy lay on its side with its legs slightly pulled up. She had numerous tattoos on her arms. The mummies were wearing a silk shirt, a woolen skirt, felt socks, a fur coat and a wig. All these clothes were made of very high quality and indicate the high status of the buried. She died at a young age (about 25 years old) and belonged to the elite of Pazyryk society.

This is the famous mummy of a 14-15 year old girl who was sacrificed by the Incas more than 500 years ago. It was discovered in 1999 on the slope of the Nevado Sabancaya volcano. Next to this mummy, several more children's bodies were discovered, also mummified. Researchers suggest that these children were chosen among others due to their beauty, after which they walked many hundreds of kilometers across the country, were specially prepared and sacrificed to the gods at the top of the volcano.

You've probably all watched horror films about revived mummies attacking people. These sinister dead have always captured the human imagination. However, in reality, mummies do not carry anything terrible, representing incredible archaeological value. In this issue you will find 13 real mummies that have survived to this day and are among the most significant archaeological finds of our time.

A mummy is the body of a living creature specially treated with a chemical substance, in which the process of tissue decomposition is slowed down. Mummies are stored for hundreds and even thousands of years, becoming a “window” into the ancient world. On the one hand, mummies look creepy, some people get goosebumps just looking at these wrinkled bodies, but on the other hand, they are of incredible historical value, containing interesting information about the life of the ancient world, customs, health and diet of our ancestors .

1. Screaming mummy from the Guanajuato Museum

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico is one of the strangest and most terrible in the world, with 111 mummies collected here, which are the naturally preserved mummified bodies of people, most of whom died in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and were buried in the local cemetery " Pantheon of St. Paula.

The museum's exhibits were exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, the relatives lost the right to the burial site and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery. Distorted facial expressions on some mummies indicate they were buried alive.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where they were kept. The official date of establishment of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when mummies were exhibited in glass shelves. Now the museum is visited annually by hundreds of thousands of tourists.

2. Mummy of a boy from Greenland (Kilakitsoq town)


Near the Greenlandic settlement of Qilakitsoq, located on the western coast of the largest island in the world, an entire family was discovered in 1972, mummified by low temperatures. Nine perfectly preserved bodies of the ancestors of the Eskimos, who died in Greenland at a time when the Middle Ages reigned in Europe, aroused keen interest of scientists, but one of them became famous throughout the world and beyond the scientific framework.

Belonging to a one-year-old child (as anthropologists found, who suffered from Down syndrome), it, more like some kind of doll, makes an indelible impression on visitors to the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk.

3. Two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo

The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy, is an eerie place, a necropolis that attracts tourists from all over the world with many mummified bodies in varying states of preservation. But the symbol of this place is the baby face of Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died of pneumonia in 1920. Her father, unable to cope with grief, turned to the famous physician Alfredo Salafia with a request to preserve his daughter’s body.

Now it makes the hair on the head of all visitors to the dungeons of Palermo, without exception, move - amazingly preserved, peaceful and so alive that it seems as if Rosalia only dozed off briefly, it makes an indelible impression.

4. Juanita from the Peruvian Andes


Either still a girl, or already a girl (the age of death is said to be from 11 to 15 years), named Juanita, gained worldwide fame, being included in the ranking of the best scientific discoveries according to Time magazine due to its preservation and eerie history, which after the discovery of the mummy in the ancient scientists told about the Inca settlement in the Peruvian Andes in 1995. Sacrificed to the gods in the 15th century, it has survived to this day in almost perfect condition thanks to the ice of the Andean peaks.

As part of the exhibition of the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in the city of Arequipa, the mummy often goes on tour, exhibited, for example, at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington or at many venues in the Land of the Rising Sun, which is generally distinguished by a strange love for mummified bodies.

5. Knight Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz, Germany

This German knight lived from 1651 to 1702. After his death, his body turned into a mummy naturally and is now on display for everyone to see.

According to legend, the knight Kalbutz was a great fan of taking advantage of the “right of the first night.” The loving Christian had 11 of his own children and about three dozen bastards. In July 1690, he declared his “right of the first night” regarding the young bride of a shepherd from the town of Bakwitz, but the girl did it to him, after which the knight killed her newly-made husband. Taken into custody, he swore before the judges that he was not guilty, otherwise “after death his body will not crumble into dust.”

Since Kalbutz was an aristocrat, his word of honor was enough to get him acquitted and released. The knight died in 1702 at the age of 52 and was buried in the von Kalbutze family tomb. In 1783, the last representative of this dynasty died, and in 1794, restoration work was started in the local church, during which the tomb was opened in order to rebury all the dead of the von Kalbutz family in a regular cemetery. It turned out that all of them, except Christian Friedrich, had decayed. The latter turned into a mummy, which proved the fact that the loving knight was still an oathbreaker.

6. Mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh - Ramses the Great


The mummy shown in the photo belongs to Pharaoh Ramses II (Ramses the Great), who died in 1213 BC. e. and is one of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs. It is believed that he was the ruler of Egypt during the campaign of Moses. One of the distinctive features of this mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set, the patron of royal power.

In 1974, Egyptologists discovered that the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II was rapidly deteriorating. It was decided to immediately fly it to France for examination and restoration, for which the mummies were issued a modern Egyptian passport, and in the “occupation” column they wrote “king (deceased).” At the Paris airport, the mummy was greeted with all the military honors due to the visit of the head of state.

7. Mummy of a girl 18-19 years old from the Danish city of Skrydstrup


Mummy of a girl aged 18-19, buried in Denmark in 1300 BC. e. The deceased was a tall, slender girl with long blond hair styled in an intricate hairstyle, somewhat reminiscent of a 1960s babette. Her expensive clothes and jewelry suggest that she belonged to a family of the local elite.

The girl was buried in an oak coffin lined with herbs, so her body and clothes were surprisingly well preserved. The preservation would have been even better if the layer of soil above the grave had not been damaged several years before this mummy was discovered.

8. Iceman Ötzi


Similaun Man, who was about 5,300 years old at the time of his discovery, making him the oldest European mummy, was nicknamed Ötzi by scientists. Discovered on September 19, 1991 by a couple of German tourists while walking in the Tyrolean Alps, who came across the perfectly preserved remains of an inhabitant of the Chalcolithic era thanks to natural ice mummification, it created a real sensation in the scientific world - nowhere in Europe have the bodies of our distant people been found perfectly preserved to this day ancestors

Now this tattooed mummy can be seen in the archaeological museum of Bolzano, Italy. Like many other mummies, Ötzi is allegedly shrouded in a curse: over the course of several years, under various circumstances, several people died, one way or another connected with the study of the Iceman.

9. Girl from Ide


The Girl from Yde (Dutch: Meisje van Yde) is the name given to the well-preserved body of a teenage girl discovered in a peat bog near the village of Yde in the Netherlands. This mummy was found on May 12, 1897. The body was wrapped in a woolen cape.

A woven wool noose was tied around the girl’s neck, indicating that she had been executed for some crime or had been sacrificed. There is a trace of a wound in the collarbone area. The skin was not affected by decomposition, which is typical for swamp bodies.

The results of radiocarbon dating carried out in 1992 showed that she died at about 16 years of age between 54 BC. e. and 128 AD e. The corpse's head was half shaved shortly before death. The preserved hair is long and has a reddish tint. But it should be noted that the hair of all corpses that fall into a swampy environment acquires a reddish color as a result of denaturalization of the coloring pigment under the influence of acids found in the swampy soil.

A computed tomography scan determined that during her lifetime she had a curvature of the spine. Further research led to the conclusion that the cause of this was most likely damage to the vertebrae by bone tuberculosis.

10. The Man from the Rendsvüren Mire


Rendswühren Man, who also belongs to the so-called “swamp people,” was found near the German city of Kiel in 1871. At the time of death, the man was between 40 and 50 years old, and examinations of the body showed that he died due to a blow to the head.

11. Seti I - Egyptian pharaoh in the tomb


The superbly preserved mummy of Seti I and the remains of the original wooden coffin were discovered in the Deir el-Bahri cache in 1881. Seti I ruled Egypt from 1290 to 1279. BC e. The mummy of this pharaoh was buried in a specially prepared tomb.

Seti is a minor character in the science fiction films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, where he is depicted as a pharaoh who falls victim to a plot by his high priest, Imhotep.

12. Mummy of Princess Ukok

The mummy of this woman, nicknamed the “Altai Princess,” was found by archaeologists in 1993 on the Ukok plateau and is one of the most significant discoveries in archeology of the late 20th century. Researchers believe that the burial was made in the 5th-3rd centuries BC and dates back to the period of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.

During the excavations, archaeologists discovered that the deck in which the body of the buried woman was placed was filled with ice. That is why the woman’s mummy is well preserved. The burial was walled up in a layer of ice. This aroused great interest among archaeologists, since very ancient things could be well preserved in such conditions. In the chamber they found six horses with saddles and harnesses, as well as a wooden larch block nailed with bronze nails. The contents of the burial clearly indicated the nobility of the buried person.

The mummy lay on its side with its legs slightly pulled up. She had numerous tattoos on her arms. The mummies were wearing a silk shirt, a woolen skirt, felt socks, a fur coat and a wig. All these clothes were made of very high quality and indicate the high status of the buried. She died at a young age (about 25 years old) and belonged to the elite of Pazyryk society.

13. Ice maiden from the Inca tribe

This is the famous mummy of a 14-15 year old girl who was sacrificed by the Incas more than 500 years ago. It was discovered in 1999 on the slope of the Nevado Sabancaya volcano. Next to this mummy, several more children's bodies were discovered, also mummified. Researchers suggest that these children were chosen among others due to their beauty, after which they walked many hundreds of kilometers across the country, were specially prepared and sacrificed to the gods at the top of the volcano.