Not only the ancient Egyptians preserve their bodies for posterity, and in Europe the dead were mummified as an exhibition showing now. Even in modern times were mummies as salutary and were eaten.

The body of Katalina Orlovits finds no rest. In 1798, the girl dies at the age of two and a half years in Hungary Vac, most likely carried off by tuberculosis. Also katalina brothers John and Michael share their fate and die already as infants. Her parents put the siblings in the crypt of the local Dominican church at, but the body does not decay.

“Due to the favorable climatic conditions in the vault preserved the body and mummified in a natural way,” says Vincent van Vilsteren. The archaeologist has brought the corpse of Katalina Orlovits from Hungary to the Dutch Assen. In the local Drentsmuseum the mummy is now one of more than 40 exhibits, visitors can see from this week.

“When they hear mummies, many people automatically think of Egypt. Us it is important to show that it anywhere in the world examples of the preservation of the deceased are,” said the archaeologist. So come the mummies from Asia, South America and Europe. “Many were intentionally mummified, others by chance.”

The collection of mummies from around the world uses incidentally the Science: Some of the exhibits are examined with imaging techniques , such as the Mummy of an infant of the South American Nazca culture . The Indian people moved once in the area of ​​present-day Peru . About 1500 years after the death of the baby his mummy has now been brought to the Wilhelmina Hospital Assen , including fabric sleeve and placed in a computed tomography (CT).

The Nazca often buried their dead in a squatting position and wrapped them with textiles. This makes the CT images as valuable : they provide a 3 -D image of the mummy and the first time evidence for the possible cause of death : ” When the backbone is noticeable that the lower vertebral arch is not closed, possibly a reference to a malformation – a so-called open spine , “says Vincent van Vilsteren .

The dead of the Nazca culture dried by extreme heat and drought in their homeland and from mummified naturally. Quite different it was in ancient Egypt. Here nature in the preservation of the dead were helped , as a glance at a 2,000 -year-old exhibit in Assen exhibition .

Cult Of The Dead:Medicine from mummies

“At this mummy can see very well the opening in the abdominal wall,” says Matthias Feuersenger. The restorer helps in placing the exhibits. “Through the hole organs were removed and placed a bandage filling, earth wax.” The Arabic term for wax is Mum and still is eponymous for resulting deaths.

Whether artificial or natural preservatives, the intention was often similar. “People all over the world believed in life after death and wanted her body to receive it,” says van Vilsteren. The results of this desire to solve always held a special fascination among the living. Until the 19th Century also wrote in Europe, people mummies special healing powers.

Relics of this belief can be found in Drentsmuseum. The curator brings a wrinkled, black foot from a small glass case, the remainder of an Egyptian mummy. “The rest of the body was ground into medicine, processed into ointments or eaten. Our ancestors were cannibals, in a way.”

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