The ‘woman with crossed legs,’ a Peruvian mummy dating back to around 600 years ago, holds a unique secret within her clasped hands—childhood memories encapsulated in a collection of milk teeth. Unearthed by the German Mummy Project, this fascinating revelation is just one of over 50 captivating narratives showcased in the groundbreaking exhibition, “Mummies: Secrets of Life,” at the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany.
The Peruvian mummy dubbed the ‘woman with crossed legs’ holds a child’s milk teeth in her clasped hands. Credit: Jean Christen/REM.
This mummy is displayed with more than 50 others from around the world in a startling new exhibition at the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. Mummies: Secrets of Life is built around the science that has been applied to the mummies and what it has revealed about long-forgotten lives and deaths.
The German Mummy Project is an international research initiative launched in 2004, after 19 wrapped and preserved bodies from South America were discovered in untouched crates in the museum’s basement during a renovation. They had been stored and moved to safety during Allied bombing in the post-war chaos; their return was overlooked.
Researchers at the University of Mannheim in Germany prepare to scan a mummy. Credit: Maria Schumann/REM
Since their discovery, researchers from several European countries have collaborated in examining them, along with more than 100 mummies of different origins held in a number of collections. They have used carbon dating, genetic analysis, and cutting-edge radiology, among other technologies, to reveal clues about individuals who lived hundreds or, sometimes, thousands of years ago.
There are many ways to mummify, or become mummified, as the exhibition shows. Bodies left in a desert quickly dry out. Bitter cold has a similar effect, as shown by the 5,400-year-old ‘Iceman’ Ötzi, found high in the Italian Alps. Boggy, acidic environments that halt decay: an acid bath preserves skin but dissolves bones; an alkaline one does the opposite. Some civilizations, notably the ancient Egyptians, used chemicals to help slow the breakdown of a corpse with, say, salts and resins. Later, people used mixtures containing ingredients from familiar domestic life. Today, anatomist Gunther von Hagens and his conceptual Body Worlds exhibitions have popularized the practice that replicates the processes that replace water and fat in tissue with, say, salts and resins. To-day, anatomist and polymath Gunther von Hagens and his controversial Body Worlds exhibitions have popularized the practice that replicates the process that replaces water and fat in tissue with, say, salts and resins.
The mummified remains of a woman and two toddlers from Chile. Credit: Jean Christophe/REM
Among the most extensively studied of the rediscovered artifacts are the remains of a woman with two small children, one laid on her chest. Anthropologists had assumed that the children had been placed on her relatively intact, because their blackened cloth seemed much fresher than that of the other bodies. But computerized tomography (CT) scans showed that all three died together in an overexpanded chest and a blocked airway. An example of the same tragic material is now used to understand historic and molecular pathology at the Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy (the city where Ötzi rests). Institute director Albert Zink says that identification should be completed in time to update the exhibition before it ends.
In July, the team found that the younger child had an over-expanded chest and a blackened cloth wrapped around her windpipe, indicating that she probably choked to death. A sample of the same forensic material is now undergoing historical and molecular analysis at the Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy (the city where Ötzi rests). Institute director Albert Zink says that identification should be completed in time to update the exhibition before it ends.
The team has identified pathological cases of death in other remains. A CT scan of a mummified-aged man from Egypt who died around 2,000 years ago, for instance, indicated a probable tumor of the pituitary gland, which typically leads to excess secretion of growth hormone. The scan showed the thickened facial features and enlarged hands characteristic of the disorder.
Comment-to-mummy-toography scans allowed researchers to look inside this Inca mummy bundle and identify the remains of a young boy. Credit: German Mummy Project/REM
A South American Inca mummy bundle in warrior costume, housed in the Museum of Cultures in Basel, Switzerland, had been a mystery since the 1970s when an X-ray scan revealed a mummy resembling a woman. Now, a CT scan has revealed that it is actually a small boy around seven to eight years old, his head and spinal cord dotted with tumors. The wrapping was probably added in a high-profile manner, the team speculates.
This finely curated exhibition, which provides information in German and English, and includes precautions of some of the technologies used, is packed with other curiousities. There are, for instance, the naturally mummified 200-year-old corpses from a collection discovered in 1994, aging during renovation works, in the crypt of a church in Vác, Hungary. A special microclimate aided the mummification process. The remains were laid in pine coffins, cushioned with wool chips that might have released therapeutic and bactericidal growth. There are also intertwined bog bodies from the Netherlands. They were not lovers, as was assumed: scientific examination shows that they were two men who died 2,000 years ago, and happened to roll into each other in their swampy graves.
3D Contrast: Lukas Fischer/Current Archaeology
On display, too, is the first-ever X-ray of a mummy, taken in Frankfurt in 1896, just months after Wilhelm Röntgen first produced and detected the electromagnetic radiation. It hangs alongside a modern CT scan of the same remains, and the mummy itself. Particularly startling is a 3D digital facial reconstruction based on a 500-year-old Peruvian female mummy. Looking at her smooth skin and dark hair, I was moved by her fate: she died too young, I thought.
Ötzi is physically absent, but the lack is balanced by an elegant, intuitive terror that resonates from the mass of data that researchers have gleaned about him. The Iceman is among the oldest mummies ever discovered, and his virtual presence completes an exhibition that spans many times and places.
Researchers at the University of Mannheim in Germany prepare to scan a mummy.