Provides information on the latest mummy finds from different cultures, climates, and time periods.

This compelling historical and cultural look at mummies proves that fact can be just as fascinating as fiction.This companion volume to a much-anticipated exhibit traveling the U.S. starting in 2010 features seventy mummies from a variety of cultures and geographical sites, including Asia, Oceania, South America, and Europe as well as ancient Egypt. It reveals the wide variety of processes our ancestors used to preserve the bodies of the dead-not just in the desert sands but in ice, on grassy moors, and even basement rooms. Nearly thirty scientific essays bring together the latest findings in the fields of forensic research, archaeology, anthropology, and biology. With dignity and reverence, and with outstanding photographs and illustrations, this volume communicates the unspoken secrets that mummies can tell us. ILLUSTRATIONS 180 colour illustrations

Discusses mummies found around the world, including Peru, Denmark, and the Italian Alps, and explains how studying them provides clues to past ways of life.

"Today, a good century after the first X-rays of mummies, Egyptology has the benefit of all the methods and means at the disposal of forensic medicine. The 'mummy stories' we tell have changed their tone, but they have enjoyed much success, with fantastic scientific and technological results resolving the mysteries of the ancient land of the pharaohs."--from the Foreword Mummies are the things that fascinate us most about ancient Egypt. But what are mummies? How did the Egyptians create them? And why? What became of the people they once were? We are learning more all the time about the cultural processes surrounding mummification and the medical characteristics of ancient Egyptian mummies. In the first part of Mummies and Death in Egypt Françoise Dunand gives an overview of the history of mummification in Egypt from the prehistoric to the Roman period. She thoroughly describes the preparations of the dead (tombs and their furnishings, funerary offerings, ornamentation of the corpse, coffins, and canopic jars), and she includes a separate chapter on the mummification of animals. She links these various practices and behaviors to the religious beliefs of classical Egypt. In the second part of this book, Roger Lichtenberg, a physician and archaeologist, offers a fascinating narrative of his forensic research on mummies, much of it conducted with a portable X-ray machine on archaeological digs. His findings have revealed new information on the ages of the mummified, their causes of death, and the illnesses and injuries they suffered. Together, Dunand and Lichtenberg provide a state-of-the-art account of the science of mummification and its social and religious context.

Investigate mysteries from the grave in this creepy-fun compendium of the world's most fascinating mummies. Learn what the experts have discovered about each mummy's life and death.

Northern Japan is home to an ancient, esoteric tradition of self-mummifying Buddhist monks, little known to the outside world. Long after death, these ascetics continue to be revered as Living Buddhas. This first English-language work on the subject recounts the process by which these monks starve themselves for a decade, bury themselves alive with only a small breathing tube, and meditate until death. After three years, the mummified body is exhumed and displayed. The biographies of various monks are presented within, as is an examination of the religious beliefs involved, an amalgamation of three distinct religious traditions. Also explored is the role of asceticism in religion, and beliefs about life and death shared by the Buddhist sects involved in self-mummification.

"Bodies and graves present a unique and exciting aspect of archaeology, providing much information about social status through the quality and quantity of goods found in graves and tombs. This book surveys the great variety of this archaeological form from around the world, from the earliest fossil humans to the royal burials of Ur and the victims of the Battle of Little Bighorn, and explores what it is they have to tell us about the lives and deaths of our ancestors". --Amazon.com.

On 15-17 September, 1993, Innsbruck, Austria, search. Another remarkable case, that of the pre-Colum hosted the International Mummy Symposium. This bian miner from Restauradora Mine near Chuqincamata does not mean that beautiful North Tyrol was the setting in northern Chile, is the result of impregnation with for a gathering of the world's most prominent mummies copper salts, and the mummy became an attraction as themselves, but rather the exciting discovery of a Late "Copper Man" at various fairs around the country. As he Neolithic glacial mummy released from the ice of the was found with a complete set of miner's tools, the Otztal Alps provided the focus of attention for numerous mummy offers a unique insight into the life and working scholars from many different parts of the world to come conditions of an Indio miner of the first millennium AD. together to address various questions relating to mum Even so, the mummified remains comprise only the skel mified human remains. eton with a completely rigid covering of skin, whereas Normally researchers studying the remains of histori the other soft parts have not survived. calor prehistoric human bodies will at best have bony In contrast, mummification in ice, and especially in substance to work on. It is rarely the case that soft parts the permafrost, can produce much better results.

Describes the techniques and the reasons for the use of mummification in ancient Egypt.