When one thinks of a mummy, they can't help but think of Egypt. If I said to someone where do mummies come from, I am sure that is what most people would reply. It may be true that the great bulk of mummies are Egyptian, but Egypt is far from the only place where mummies are found. The main difference between most Egyptian mummies and mummies from other places, is that the Egyptian mummies were generally created on purpose while most of the other mummies were created naturally. The Egyptians had a long arduous process for creating mummies which included removing the organs from the body and putting them into jars. This process is still secret today. An example of a modern day mummy that was created on purpose is Lenin. The Russians did everything possible to preserve his body for viewing near the Kremlin Wall, but even though he died less than 100 years ago in 1924, he is slowly decomposing. When he died, work was started on his mausoleum the very next day and embalmers and scientists were assigned to preserve the body for posterity. He was so popular at the time in Russia, that over 1,000,000 people viewed the body in the first three days. Maybe it wasn't popularity though, maybe you had to view the body because everyone was watching you and it would look very bad if you didn't do it. When Stalin died he was kept with Lenin for a time.

A strange mummy story occurred in the U.S., a most unlikely place for mummies. To make it even stranger, it occurred in Long Beach, California. During the filming of a tv episode in a fun house in the area, something very strange happened. The director noticed a dummy hanging from the ceiling and thought that it took away from the scene. He ordered it taken down. As it was being lowered, a piece broke off revealing a bone, a human arm bone. The police were called and the medical examiner determined that this was the mummified body of a man. The man's body had somehow turned into a mummy after he had been killed. It is believed that the mummy was the body of western outlaw Elmer McCurdy who died in 1911. The episode was shot in 1976 and aired on 13 February, 1977. You can look for the show on reruns, it is the Six Million Dollar Man and the episode is named "Carnival of Spies"

If one wants to see some strange mummies he has just to hop on a plane and travel to St. Michan's church in Dublin, Ireland, yeah even Ireland has mummies. It seems that the church has limestone walls which are conducive to keeping things very dry, which in turn helps with preservation. Some of the mummies on view are very strange. One is the body of a crusader who was over eight feet tall. It seems that someone decided to chop off his hands and feet. Just because his hands and feet were cut off doesn't mean that you can't touch one of his hands which is there. Yes it is actually left out so it can be touched. Yuck! There is also the mummy of a nun who had died over 400 years ago. An interesting aside is that this is the church where Handel, using the church's organ, composed The Messiah. Can you imagine some one over 8 feet tall, he must have been extremely intimidating as a soldier, specially since most people were very short in those days. He had to be over 3 feet taller than the average man of the time.

Dry areas are not always the reason that mummies are formed, sometimes bodies caught in extreme icy conditions also turn into mummies. One of the most famous mummies in the world is the iceman. He was discovered in 1991 by hikers, when they found him sticking out of the ice. He had died about 4,000 B.C. All his copper age equipment was with him. Even the contents of his stomach had been examined to better understand what people ate in those days. He had a bow and arrows with him and a copper axe. There has been a strange find that may relate to the death of the iceman. It has been reported that an ancient stone has been found that may contain the story of the iceman's death. This seems very strange to me and I have a hard time believing it due to the solitary death of the poor man, but it is said that the stone shows an archer who is about to shoot an arrow into the back of an unarmed man. This seems to be the way the iceman, sometimes called Otzi, died. Now for some bad news, decay may be setting in and this has scientists very worried.

When we think of mummies, we think of shriveled or dried up bodies that are hardly recognizable as people. We are correct in most cases, but not in all. There is a mummy in China, that of a woman, who looks like she is asleep. When you consider the fact that she died in 202 B.C. this is quite scary. The mummy is of Lady Dai, who was a noblewoman from the Han Dynasty. She is considered the best preserved mummy in the world by many. To see this mummy, one has to go to the Hunan Provincial Museum in Ch'angsha. The lady was buried with incredible riches and when she was found it was considered to be one of the greatest finds in Chinese history. No one knows how to preserve bodies to this extent.

The last great mummy I will discuss here is the mummy named the Lindow Man. He was discovered in 1985, in a bog near Cheshire, England. He was murdered somewhere around 50 AD to 100 AD. He is part of a group of many murdered people who were thrown into bogs in ancient times. I don't want to get too gory, but I think it is important to show how violent those times were. The poor man had his skull smashed, he was strangled and his throat was slit. Some people think that this may have been some form of capital punishment and that is why so many people were killed violently and thrown into bogs, but no one can be sure of this. The Lindow Man is on display at the London Museum.

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Mummy Pictures

When it comes to mummies, everyone seems to be interested. It must be that we all want to know more about our past and mummies present an opportunity to see actual bodies from some past period in time, sometimes the very distant past. Well whatever the reason for our intense interest in this subject, it seem that we are discovering more mummies every year and who knows, maybe some day we will find a Neanderthal mummy.