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Bog Bodies and the Souls of the Dead: 8 Things You Didn’t Know About Mummies
Mummies are coming to Baltimore for a museum exhibit. It's time to wrap your head around all the new information emerging from the long buried humans and animals.
1) Mummies, including a 500-year-old dog that is still brown and fluffy and a 6,004-year-old child, will be in Baltimore, Saturday Sept. 28 at the Maryland Science Center, 601 Light St., when the Mummies of the World Exhibition will be opening. – Patch.com
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2) Mummies aren’t just buried humans. “Pre-Columbian cultures living in Peru and Chile would bury guinea pigs, llamas and other creatures alongside their dead.” – Mummies of the World, Exhibition Facebook Page.
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3) Scientists have many new tools to study mummies, one of which is CAT scanning. This particular technique showed how some mummies had clogged arteries. – Oregonlive.com
4) Be cautious showing mummies to younger children. Museums carrying the exhibition have asked that parents accompany children under the age of 13. - Heraldextra.com
5) It’s possible for humans or animals to be accidentally mummified. “This process is made possible by being in a dry, cool cave or crypt, in a bog, in salt or dry desert land.” - Mummies of the World, Exhibition Facebook Page.
6) Egyptians are well known for preserving their dead. They believed when someone died, the soul left the body, but would come back to the body after it was buried. The souls needed to recognize the body to complete the process. – Exploreutahscience.org
7) Want to read about modern political mummies? Venezuala’s Hugo Chavez will be embalmed and displayed in a museum, reported the BBC. – bbc.co.uk
8) A recent fascinating case: Two “bog bodies” were found in the Netherlands in 1904. The bodies, which were embracing each other, were long thought to be a man and a woman, the Weerdinge couple. Recently, researchers discovered they were both male. – Facebook Page of Mummy Researcher Dr. Heather Gill-Frerking.
PHOTO INFO: Long thought to be a man and a woman, these embracing "bog bodies" were recently discovered to be both male.
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