Thinking Out Loud: Mummies...A Weird but Intoxicating Interest
There's something about ancient death, where we've been and where we're going that draws us in.
Thinking Out Loud has been hitting the digital streets for something like 115 weeks now and this may be the weirdest one yet. You're totally excused if you're grossed out by the subject. At the same time, there is something about death in a physical form, specifically mummies and skeletons, that spikes an interest in people. It's fully expected that some of you are going to scan the photos below and say, "What the hell?!" That's what delete buttons are for. Others are going to read the explanations and think they're cool in a macabre sort of way. There's no way of knowing how people will respond to the concepts represented, so have at it.
Two things kicked this subject off: One was that the image of Tollund Man below is constantly popping up on this screen as part of a 147-photo (and growing) screensaver rotation. The other is that there is a roving museum exhibition, Mummies of the World, which was featured at the LA Scientific Center and sucked in tens of thousands of people. Tickets were really hard to get and not cheap. Check around. It might be showing up at your local museum in the future.
What that kind of turnout says is that the subject is more than a casual interest to a lot of folks. In fact, if you think about it, how many mummy movies have been produced? Almost all of them have been box office winners.
Bringing it down to a personal level, in 1977 Tutmania gripped the country when truckloads of the goodies the boy-king was buried with, including his 450 pound, solid gold sarcophagus, were put on exhibit at the famous Field Museum in Chicago. The attendance broke all records and they probably still stand. How intense was the interest? We drove from NJ to Chicago, 800+ miles in a day, dragging a five-year-old son along who was just getting over chicken pox. We did our best to keep him separated from the rest of the world. However, we couldn't miss such an opportunity just because we were spreading a disease nationwide! Yeah, we were young and thoughtless. However, we got to gawk our brains out at the Tut Stuff.
The Tutankhamun mummy is what most people mentally picture, when the word "mummy" is tossed around. Certainly Egypt is the standard by which mummification is measured. However, not only was Egypt not the first to imagine themselves into eternal life via prepping and equipping the deceased for the trip across the river. In many other countries that preparation wasn't necessary. Nature did it for them. Sometimes it just "happened". Other times the culture selected a burial situation that forced it to happen, although it's certain they had no idea it was going to happen.
Tollund Man, named for where he was found in Denmark may be the best preserved, most famous old guy on the planet. Look at that face! It looks peaceful and keeps us from noticing the leather laced chord around his neck. He was executed! Then he was tossed into one of the bazillion peat bogs that litter the whole Scandinavian landscape. Why the bog? Probably because it was easier than digging a hole. The bog disposal process was repeated hundreds of times which has resulted in lots of similar discoveries while cutting peat out of the bogs. The acid compounds in the peat preserve and darken the soft tissues making Tollund guy and his mummified buddies a supermarket of information for scientists since he was found in 1950. How old is he? Let's see. Right now it's 2024 AD and he checked out around 450 BC, so that would make him almost exactly 2,500 years old. Looks pretty good for an old guy!
And then there's Otzi. He's as famous as Tollund guy. Plus, he's not only much older but his entire body was in better shape because he was fresh frozen as soon as he died. He was pretty much minding his own business out hunting high in the Italian Alps when someone put an arrow into him from behind.
A couple of German tourists found him sticking out of the ice in 1991 at 10,000 feet in the Alps and his preserved condition had the local feds thinking he was a long dead, local mountaineer. Fortunately, an archeologist identified his hunting gear as being pre-historic.
Turned out he was very pre-historic! Analysis later showed he had died something like 3100 BC, so, we're talking about a relatively healthy looking corpse that's 5,300 years old! That makes him nearly 2,000 years older than the kid king Tut! And it cost nothing to mummify him. Governments and religions always find ways to spend money and Tut, who reigned for only a few years and was 19, is an example. He hadn't earned a 450 pound, solid gold casket. Oh, well!
The Baroness Schrenk von Geiern and Baron Von Holz, covered because their families prefer a modest display, aren't old at all. Von Holz was a nobleman in the 1600s who apparently died in the Thirty Year War and the two of them were holed up in a castle crypt. The conditions kept them from decomposing and they're now cruising the country as part of the Mummies of the World exhibit. Mummification sometimes just happens, whether its planned or not.
The Incas in Peru would routinely sacrifice their children to appease the gods. The three here, the Mummies of Llullaillaco, were discovered in 1999 at 22,100 feet. They had been drugged up with coca and alcohol, placed in a small chamber still alive but totally out of it. The conditions surrounding the Incas at the time must have been really severe for them to sacrifice three children at the same time in the attempt to cool off some pissed off God! Incan child mummies are often found bundled in exposed positions in the Peruvian/Chile mountains. Most date from the 1300-1400s. Physically they are usually extremely well preserved by the cold.
This is the Llullaillaco Maiden. Hard to believe you would willingly sacrifice your child to the Gods.
And then there is Tut and his solid gold casket/sarcophagus.
Some theories say he was murdered. but in my view he was actually murdered after he was dug up by Howard Carter in 1922 because of the brutal way his mummy has been treated. If you compare photos of how he looked when first unwrapped, and how he looks now, his eyelids have gone away and basically, he has suffered decomposition and rough handling. We should have left him wrapped. We’re nothing more than 20th centuries tomb robbers. At least his mummy/body has been returned to the tomb where he/it was found.
Tut's tomb is the only Egyptian pharaoh's tomb (out of 170 over about 3,000 years) that has been found that hadn't been plundered and pretty well cleaned out shortly after the burial. Tomb robbing was something of a career for many. We have their descendants roaming our streets in modern form (ignore the bitching). The reasons Tut's was intact is that, first of all, he died much earlier than planned so they didn't have time to build him his own grandiose tomb. He took someone else's, a lesser nobleman, so it was much smaller. It was in the Valley of the Kings along with hundreds of tombs and, when one of the other tombs was being built, the workmen unknowingly built their huts on top of Tut's tomb so it basically disappeared.
To sum it up, there are mummies and there are mummies. Some have been engineered and manufactured. Some just happened. Who knows, maybe in a couple thousand years someone is going to stumble across our own coffin, and, by some sort of weird happenstance we're one of those who looks as good as we did when dropped in the box. The bottom line, however, is who cares?
I won’t be one of those looking good in a box. I’m going to be toasted. I've thought about talking my kids into having a party after I check out and secretly working my ashes into succotash or something. Or having the get together during the winter and using my ashes on the drive way in the snow and ice for traction. It would be nice to be of use right to the end.
Or maybe not.
bd
At one time I wondered about the whole appeal of horror movies, the Goth wardrobe thing and anything Macabre. Then I thought back to the book in our high school library with pictures of Lincoln on his deathbed and how it captured my attention. I got over it quickly though!
I must admit, Ann and I will watch “The Mummy” when it comes on. And it’s not a very good movie… maybe it’s the whole black magic thing with the accompanying unknown dialogue in an ancient Egyptian language.
Some amazing historical context on this topic. Thank you, Budd.