What happens if you hold a mummy in a museum. Mummies of Guanajuato: the sad story of the cholera epidemic in Mexico

Probably, all of you have watched horror films about reanimated mummies attacking people. These sinister dead have always excited the human imagination. However, in reality, mummies do not carry anything terrible, representing an incredible archaeological value. In this issue you will find 13 real mummies that have survived to our time and are among the most significant archaeological finds of our time.

A mummy is a body of a dead creature specially treated with a chemical substance, in which the process of tissue decomposition slows down. Mummies are stored for hundreds and even thousands of years, becoming a "window" to the ancient world. On the one hand, mummies look creepy, some goosebumps run from just looking at these wrinkled bodies, but on the other hand, they are of incredible historical value, keeping the most interesting information about the life of the ancient world, customs, health and diet of our ancestors. .

1The Screaming Mummy From The Guanajuato Museum

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico is one of the strangest and most terrible in the world; 111 mummies are collected here, which are naturally preserved mummified bodies of people, most of whom died in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and were buried in the local cemetery " Pantheon of Saint Paula.

The exhibits of the museum were exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax for the bodies of their relatives to be in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, then the relatives lost the right to the burial place and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery. The distorted facial expressions on some of the mummies indicate that they were buried alive.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where they were stored. The official date of formation of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when the mummies were exhibited in glass shelves. The museum is now visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.

2. The mummy of a boy from Greenland (Kilakitsok township)

Near the Greenlandic settlement of Kilakitsoq, located on the west coast of the largest island in the world, in 1972 an entire family was discovered, mummified by means of low temperatures. Nine well-preserved bodies of Eskimo ancestors who died on the territory of Greenland at a time when the Middle Ages reigned in Europe aroused the keen interest of scientists, but one of them became famous all over the world and beyond the scientific framework.

Belonging to a one-year-old child (anthropologists who suffered from Down's syndrome), it looks more like some kind of doll and makes a lasting impression on visitors to the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk.

3. Two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo

The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy is an eerie place, a necropolis that attracts tourists from all over the world with many mummified bodies of varying degrees of preservation. But the symbol of this place is the baby face of Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died of pneumonia in 1920. Her father, unable to cope with grief, turned to the famous physician Alfredo Salafia with a request to save his daughter's body.

Now it makes the hair on the head of all, without exception, visitors to the dungeons of Palermo move - amazingly preserved, peaceful and so alive that it seems as if Rosalia had only dozed off for a short while, it makes an indelible impression.

4. Juanita from the Peruvian Andes

Whether still a girl, or already a girl (the age of death is called from 11 to 15 years), named Juanita, gained worldwide fame, being included in the ranking of the best scientific discoveries according to Time magazine due to her safety and terrible story, which, after finding the mummy in the ancient Inca settlements in the Peruvian Andes in 1995, scientists told. Sacrificed to the gods in the 15th century, it has survived to this day in almost perfect condition thanks to the ice of the Andean peaks.

As part of the exposition of the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in Arequipa, the mummy often goes on tour, exhibiting, for example, at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington or at many sites in the Land of the Rising Sun, which is generally distinguished by a strange love for mummified bodies.

5. Knight Christian Friedrich von Kalbutz, Germany

This German knight lived from 1651 to 1702. After his death, his body turned into a mummy in a natural way and is now on public display.

According to legend, the knight Kalbutz was a great lover to use the "right of the first night." The loving Christian had 11 children of his own and about three dozen bastards. In July 1690, he declared his “right of the first night” regarding the young bride of a shepherd from the town of Buckwitz, but the girl refused him, after which the knight killed her newly-made husband. Imprisoned, he swore before the judges that he was not guilty, otherwise "after death, his body will not crumble to dust."

Since Kalbutz was an aristocrat, his word of honor was enough for him to be acquitted and released. The knight died in 1702 at the age of 52 and was buried in the von Kalbutz family tomb. In 1783, the last representative of this dynasty died, and in 1794 a restoration was started in the local church, during which the tomb was opened in order to rebury all the dead of the von Kalbutz family in a regular cemetery. It turned out that all of them, except for Christian Friedrich, had decayed. The latter turned into a mummy, which proved the fact that the loving knight was still a perjurer.

6. The mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh - Ramses the Great

The mummy shown in the photo belongs to Pharaoh Ramses II (Ramses the Great), who died in 1213 BC. e. and is one of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs. It is believed that he was the ruler of Egypt during the campaign of Moses. One of the distinguishing features of this mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set, the patron saint of royal power.

In 1974, Egyptologists discovered that the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II was rapidly deteriorating. It was decided to immediately take her by plane to France for examination and restoration, for which the mummies issued a modern Egyptian passport, and in the column "occupation" they wrote "king (deceased)". At the Paris airport, the mummy was met with all military honors due to the visit of the head of state.

7. The mummy of a girl 18-19 years old from the Danish city of Skrydstrup

The mummy of a girl aged 18-19, buried in Denmark in 1300 BC. e. The deceased was a tall, slender girl with long blond hair styled in an intricate hairstyle somewhat reminiscent of a 1960s babette. Her expensive clothes and jewelry suggest that she belonged to a local elite family.

The girl was buried in an oak coffin lined with herbs, so her body and clothes are surprisingly well preserved. Preservation would have been even better if, several years before this mummy was discovered, the layer of soil over the grave had not been damaged.

The Similaunian Man, who was about 5,300 years old at the time of discovery, making him the oldest European mummy, was nicknamed Ötzi by scientists. Discovered on September 19, 1991 by a couple of German tourists during a walk in the Tyrolean Alps, who stumbled upon the remains of a Chalcolithic resident perfectly preserved thanks to natural ice mummification, he made a splash in the scientific world - nowhere else in Europe have they found the bodies of our distant ancestors.

Now this tattooed mummy can be seen in the archaeological museum of Bolzano, Italy. Like many other mummies, Ötzi is allegedly shrouded in a halo of curse: over the course of several years, under various circumstances, several people died, one way or another connected with the study of the Iceman.

The Girl from Yde (Dutch. Meisje van Yde) is the name given to the well-preserved body of a teenage girl found in a peat bog near the village of Yde in the Netherlands. This mummy was found on May 12, 1897. The body was wrapped in a woolen cape.

A noose woven from wool was tightened around the girl's neck, indicating that she was executed for some kind of crime or sacrificed. In the region of the collarbone, a trace of the wound was preserved. The skin was not affected by decomposition, which is typical for bog bodies.

The results of a radiocarbon analysis carried out in 1992 showed that she died at the age of about 16 years between 54 BC and 54 BC. e. and 128 AD. e. The corpse's head was half-shaved shortly before death. The surviving hair is long and has a reddish tint. But it should be noted that the hair of all corpses that have fallen into the swamp environment acquire a reddish color as a result of the denaturalization of the coloring pigment under the influence of acids found in the swampy soil.

Computed tomography determined that during life she had a curvature of the spine. Further studies led to the conclusion that the cause of this, most likely, was the defeat of the vertebrae by bone tuberculosis.

10. Man from Rendsvuren bog

The man from Rendswühren, who also belongs to the so-called swamp people, was found near the German city of Kiel in 1871. At the time of death, the man was between 40 and 50 years old, and body examinations showed that he died from a blow to the head.

11. Seti I - Egyptian pharaoh in the tomb

The superbly preserved mummy of Seti I and the remains of the original wooden coffin were discovered in the Deir el-Bahri cache in 1881. Seti I ruled Egypt from 1290 to 1279. BC e. The mummy of this pharaoh was buried in a specially prepared tomb.

Seti is a minor character in the science fiction films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, where he is portrayed as a pharaoh who fell victim to a conspiracy by his high priest, Imhotep.

12. The mummy of Princess Ukok

The mummy of this woman, nicknamed the Altai Princess, was found by archaeologists in 1993 on the Ukok Plateau and is one of the most significant discoveries in archeology at the end of the 20th century. Researchers believe that the burial was made in the 5th-3rd centuries BC and belongs to the period of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.

During excavations, archaeologists discovered that the deck in which the body of the buried was placed was filled with ice. That is why the woman's mummy is well preserved. The burial was immured in a layer of ice. This aroused great interest of archaeologists, since in such conditions very ancient things could be well preserved. Six horses under saddles and with a harness were found in the chamber, as well as a wooden block of larch, nailed down with bronze nails. The contents of the burial clearly indicated the nobility of the buried person.

The mummy lay on its side with its legs slightly tucked up. She had numerous tattoos on her arms. The mummies were wearing a silk shirt, a woolen skirt, felt socks, a fur coat and a wig. All these clothes were made of very high quality and testify to the high status of the buried. She died at a young age (about 25 years old) and belonged to the elite of Pazyryk society.

13. Ice maiden from the Inca tribe

This is the famous mummy of a girl aged 14-15, who was sacrificed by the Incas more than 500 years ago. It was discovered in 1999 on the slope of the Nevado-Sabankaya volcano. Next to this mummy, several more children's bodies were also found, which were also mummified. Researchers suggest that these children were chosen among others due to their beauty, after which they traveled many hundreds of kilometers across the country, were specially prepared and sacrificed to the gods at the top of the volcano.

But in real life, they do not pose any danger, but are the most valuable archaeological object that can tell about the life and traditions of ancient people. If you are not afraid of meeting a mummy, then you should definitely visit the Guanajuato Museum in Mexico, which has collected more than fifty mummies under one roof.

One of the most shocking museums is located in Mexico, in the city of Guanajuato. You will never see living creatures there, because the main and only exhibits are mummies. Before proceeding to the story, let's figure out who the mummies are. A mummy is the body of a living being, treated with a special chemical composition that slows down the decomposition process.

The history of the creation of the museum of mummies

How did the idea to create such a strange museum arise? Let's turn to history. It all started in the 19th century, when the city authorities introduced a burial tax. From now on, in order to be buried in the cemetery, the population had to pay a fee. Of course, the dead could not pay for themselves, this obligation was automatically transferred to the relatives of the deceased. But, as a rule, the payment either simply did not arrive, or the deceased did not have relatives. Then the bodies were exhumed. Imagine the astonishment of the gravediggers as they dig up not a bunch of bare bones, but whole bodies, practically in perfect condition. Mystic? Not at all. It's all about the special structure and unusual composition of the soil, which created natural conditions for mummification.

The law has been in effect for almost a hundred years. But this was quite enough to raise a rich fund for the future museum. The mummies were kept in a building next to the cemetery. Time passed, and this collection began to attract more and more tourists, who were even ready to pay to "admire" the terrible exhibits. This is how the Guanajuato Mummies Museum appeared.

Museum structure

In total, the museum has 111 mummies at its disposal, but only 59 are on public display. But even this number is enough to instill fear in some tourists. The museum begins with a small corridor lined on both sides with the most ordinary and unremarkable mummies. The most interesting thing is that on each of them the skin was preserved. Not as tender as a person's, but the creature died long ago, it's forgivable. Some of the deceased are exhibited in the clothes in which they were buried. But then the exhibits become much more interesting. In the past, these are people of different classes. For example, there is a mummy in a leather jacket. Surprising, considering that a person lived in the 19th century, when there was no rock and motorcycles. In another room you can meet a mummy in full dress: dress, jewelry. There is even a mummy with a scythe to the waist. Here are the exhibits.

But most of all, the tradition of taking pictures with dead children is terrifying. The museum even features photographs that will make your hair stand on end. In the next room you can see the mummy of a pregnant woman and her child - the smallest mummy in the world. No one will be indifferent to the room with mummies who died not a natural death. There you can meet drowned people, and a woman who fell into a lethargic sleep, and a man who died from a cranial injury. Each pose makes it clear who died and how. Some of them even had shoes on. These are whole works of art of the ancient shoe industry.

And in conclusion

Many will consider the Mexicans a savage people, easily related to death. What causes horror and disgust in us is commonplace in them. Mexicans prefer to be friends with death. So bequeathed even distant ancestors. They even have a national holiday - "day of the dead". For the people of Mexico, death is the most common occurrence. Maybe we should also take life easier?

: 21°01′11″ s. sh. 101°15′58″ W d. /  21.0199278° s. sh. 101.2663833° W d. / 21.0199278; -101.2663833(G) (I) K: Museums founded in 1969

History and exposition of the museum

The museum contains 111 mummies (there are 59 mummies on display), exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax for the bodies of their relatives to be in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, then the relatives lost the right to the burial place, and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery.

The oldest burials date from 1833, when there was a cholera epidemic in the city. According to other sources, the mummies exhibited in the museum belong to people who died in the years 1850-1950.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where they were kept. The official date of formation of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is considered to be 1969, when the mummies were exhibited in glazed racks.

In 2007, the museum's exposition was redistributed on various topics. According to the official website, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the museum every year. Since the same 2007, 22 mummies have been examined by specialists from the University of Texas at San Marcos ( Texas State University, San Marcos) .

Beginning in 2009, a series of exhibitions were organized in the United States that featured 36 mummies from the museum. The first of these exhibitions opened in October 2009 in Detroit.

Gallery

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Ticket offices and entrance to the museum shop

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Souvenir shop next to the museum of mummies

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One of the dressed mummies

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Fragment of the hand of one of the mummies

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Lying mummy of a child

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Mummies from the museum

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• www.mummytombs.com
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An excerpt characterizing the Museum of Mummies (Guanajuato)

- Well done guys! - said Prince Bagration.
"For the sake of ... hoo ho ho ho! ..." resounded through the ranks. The gloomy soldier who was walking on the left, shouting, looked round at Bagration with such an expression as if he were saying: "we know ourselves"; the other, without looking back and as if afraid of being entertained, with his mouth open, shouted and passed.
They were ordered to stop and take off their knapsacks.
Bagration rode around the rows that passed by him and dismounted from his horse. He gave the Cossack the reins, took off and handed over the cloak, straightened his legs and straightened his cap on his head. The head of the French column, with officers in front, appeared from under the mountain.
"With God!" Bagration spoke in a firm, audible voice, turned for a moment to the front and, slightly waving his arms, with the awkward step of a cavalryman, as if laboring, went forward across the uneven field. Prince Andrei felt that some irresistible force was drawing him forward, and he experienced great happiness. [Here the attack occurred, about which Thiers says: “Les russes se conduisirent vaillamment, et chose rare a la guerre, on vit deux masses d" infanterie Mariecher resolument l "une contre l" autre sans qu "aucune des deux ceda avant d "etre abordee"; and Napoleon on St. Helena said: "Quelques bataillons russes montrerent de l" intrepidite ". [The Russians behaved valiantly, and a thing rare in war, two masses of infantry marched decisively against one another, and neither of the two gave way until the very collision. Napoleon's words: [Several Russian battalions showed fearlessness.]
The French were already close; already Prince Andrei, walking next to Bagration, clearly distinguished the bandages, red epaulettes, even the faces of the French. (He clearly saw one old French officer, who, with twisted legs in boots, was with difficulty walking uphill.) Prince Bagration did not give a new order and still silently walked in front of the ranks. Suddenly, one shot crackled between the French, another, a third ... and smoke spread through all the upset enemy ranks and the firing crackled. Several of our men fell, including the round-faced officer who walked so cheerfully and diligently. But at the same moment as the first shot rang out, Bagration looked around and shouted: "Hurrah!"
"Hurrah ah ah!" a drawn-out cry resounded along our line, and, overtaking Prince Bagration and each other, in a discordant, but cheerful and lively crowd, ours ran downhill after the upset French.

The attack of the 6th Chasseurs ensured the retreat of the right flank. In the center, the action of Tushin's forgotten battery, which managed to set fire to Shengraben, stopped the movement of the French. The French extinguished the fire carried by the wind and gave time to retreat. The retreat of the center through the ravine was carried out hastily and noisily; however, the troops, retreating, were not confused by teams. But the left flank, which was simultaneously attacked and bypassed by the superior forces of the French under the command of Lann and which consisted of the Azov and Podolsky infantry and Pavlograd hussar regiments, was upset. Bagration sent Zherkov to the general of the left flank with orders to retreat immediately.
Zherkov briskly, without taking his hand off his cap, touched the horse and galloped off. But as soon as he drove away from Bagration, his forces betrayed him. An insurmountable fear came over him, and he could not go where it was dangerous.
Having approached the troops of the left flank, he did not go forward, where there was shooting, but began to look for the general and commanders where they could not be, and therefore did not give orders.
The command of the left flank belonged in seniority to the regimental commander of the very regiment that presented itself under Braunau Kutuzov and in which Dolokhov served as a soldier. The command of the extreme left flank was assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment, where Rostov served, as a result of which there was a misunderstanding. Both commanders were greatly irritated against each other, and at the same time that the right flank had long been underway and the French had already begun the offensive, both commanders were busy with negotiations that aimed to offend each other. The regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were very little prepared for the upcoming business. The people of the regiments, from a soldier to a general, did not expect a battle and calmly engaged in peaceful affairs: feeding the horses in the cavalry, collecting firewood in the infantry.

There are many cities that are famous for their museums. The tiny town of Guanajuato is also world famous. But there are no ancient artifacts or famous paintings in it. The exhibits of this museum are the dead. And it is located in the local cemetery of Santa Paula ...

The town of Guanajuato is located in Central Mexico, 350 kilometers from the capital. In the middle of the 16th century, the Spaniards recaptured these lands from the Aztecs and founded Fort Santa Fe. The Spaniards had every reason to hold on tightly to the town: the land was famous for its gold and silver mines.

Where the metal is mined

Before the Aztecs, the Chichimecas and Purépecha lived and mined precious metals here, the name of their town was translated like this - “the place where the metal is mined”. Then the Aztecs came, set up gold mining almost on an industrial scale and renamed the town Kuanas Huato - "the abode of frogs among the hills." In the Columbian era, the Aztecs were replaced by the Spaniards. They built a powerful fortress and began to mine gold for the Spanish crown. By the 18th century, gold in the mines was depleted, silver began to be mined. The town was considered rich. Spanish settlers built it to outshine the beauty of their native Toledo. And they succeeded - beautiful cathedrals, palaces, tall fortress walls. The city, located in a green valley, climbed the "frog hills", the streets going up were built like stairs - with steps. Palaces, however, were side by side with tiny houses, one above the other, stuck to the slopes of the hills. It was a paradise for the wealthy inhabitants of Nova - and a hell for the poor. All these poor people worked in the mines. Most of the poor dreamed of throwing off the colonial yoke. This was achieved by the middle of the 19th century. Mexico gained independence. A new time and a new order have begun. However, it turned out that the rich had not gone away. The beggars still worked in the mines. Taxes kept going up. And since 1865, local gravediggers introduced an annual payment for a place in the cemetery. Now, in the event that no payment was received for the burial for 5 years, the deceased was removed from the crypt and placed in the basement. Inconsolable relatives could return the body to the grave ... if they paid the debt. Alas, not everyone could do it! The first victims of the new law were the dead, who had no relatives. The next are the bankrupt dead. Their bones lay in the basement until the enterprising owners of the cemetery began to show their dead compatriots to everyone who wanted to. Of course, secretly and for money. And then - no longer a secret. Since 1969, the cemetery cellar has been converted and received the status of a museum...

Scary exhibits

There were many dead to be expelled from the crypts. But not all "exiles" were awarded a place in the museum. There were just over a hundred of them. And the reason for placing these dead in the museum's glass cases was not trivial: during their stay in the crypt, the bodies of the dead did not disintegrate, as dead flesh should, but turned into mummies. These were mummies of natural origin - they were not embalmed after death, they were not anointed with special compounds, but simply put in a coffin. And if what usually happens with corpses happened to most of the dead, then these bodies naturally mummified.

The first exhibit is considered to be the once well-to-do deceased, Dr. Remigio Leroy. The poor fellow simply had no relatives. It was dug up in 1865 and given the inventory number "item 214". The doctor even preserved a suit made of expensive fabric. The costumes and dresses on other exhibits were either almost not preserved, or were seized by museum workers. According to one of them, there was such a smell from things that no sanitation would have helped. So most of the decayed clothes were stripped from the corpses and destroyed. That is why many of the dead are brought naked to curious tourists. True, socks and shoes were not removed from some of them - shoes did not suffer so much from time to time.

Among the exhibits there are those who died during the cholera epidemic in 1833, there are those who died from occupational diseases of miners who inhaled silver dust every day, there are those who died of old age, there are those who died as a result of an accident, there are strangled, there are drowned. And there are far more women among them than men.

Few exhibits have been identified by scientists. Among them is a woman with her hands pressed to her mouth, her shirt pulled up and her legs apart. This is Ignasia Aguilar, quite respectable mother of the family. The strange posture is simply explained by many: at the time of the burial, Ignasia was in a deep faint or fell into a lethargic sleep. She must have been buried alive. The woman woke up already in the coffin, scratching its lid, screaming, trying to escape from captivity. When she began to run out of air, she tried to tear her own mouth out in pain. Blood clots were found in the mouth. Scientists are going to investigate the substance extracted from under her nails: if it turns out to be wood or coffin lining, then a terrible guess will be confirmed.

The fate of another museum exhibit, also a woman, is no less sad. She was suffocated. There is still a piece of rope around her neck. According to the museum legend, the head of the executed man on display belongs to the strangler husband.

Another curious exhibit is a screaming woman. The mouth of this mummy is open, although the arms are folded across the chest. The faint of heart, when they first see a screaming mummy, recoil in fear. Despite the calm position of the hands, the facial expression of this exhibit is such that even some experts suspect that the woman was also buried alive...

Pharaoh's son and others

However, distorted facial features and mouths open in a silent scream are not always an indication that a person was buried alive. There is a story that happened in 1886 with the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. He discovered the mummy of a young man with his hands and feet bound, his face twisted, probably in pain, and his mouth wide open. In addition, the mummy was nameless and wrapped in a sheep's skin, which is uncharacteristic for. The archaeologist decided that the unfortunate man had been buried alive. The terrible expression on his face suggested that the conspirator was not even mummified. However, nowadays forensic doctors scanned the body and found all signs of mummification. Therefore, he was not buried alive. And the terrible expression on his face is due to the fact that this is most likely the eldest son of Pharaoh Ramses III, worthy of oblivion, who was allowed to commit suicide with poison after an unsuccessful attempt on his father.

But an open mouth may not speak of terrible torment at all. Even a calmly deceased person can get a frightening expression of "silent scream" if the deceased's jaw is poorly tied up. The exposition of the Mexican museum contains at least two dozen mummies with "screaming" mouths. There are men, women and even children among them.

The bulk of the mummies of Guanajuato, of which there are 111, do not reach not only 200, but also 150 years. These are the youngest mummies that have arisen naturally. Only a few children, the so-called "angels", have traces of post-mortem intervention - internal organs were removed from them. In general, the bodies mummified themselves. In the 19th century, when the first such bodies were found, the question “why” did not arise among people. They looked at the mummified remains with reverence - it was considered a miracle and evidence of a sinless life. But today, scientists still decided to solve the riddle.

It is known that the mummified bodies were not buried in the ground. All of them were in crypts going to the cemetery by "floors". The crypts are made of limestone. The town of Guanajuato is located at an altitude of 2 kilometers above sea level, the climate is hot and dry. The conclusion of scientists is as follows: mummification is not connected either with the lifestyle of the dead, or with age, or with nutrition, but depends purely on the time of year when the body was placed in the crypt, and on the design of the crypt. If the burial took place in dry and hot weather, limestone slabs reliably block the access of air and perfectly absorb moisture coming from the body. Inside such a crypt it is dry and hot, like in an oven. The body in such a "house of death" is perfectly dried and very soon turns into a mummy. True, this process does not always have a beneficial effect on facial expressions - the muscles also dry out, tighten, facial features are distorted, and parted mouths become twisted and open in a desperate silent scream.

Perhaps everyone at least once in their life has seen some kind of horror movie in which the walking dead attack people. These sinister dead excite the human imagination. But in fact, mummies do not pose any danger, but have incredible scientific value. In our review, one of the most incredible archaeological finds of our time is the mummies of Guanajuato.

The Mummies of Guanajuato are a collection of naturally mummified bodies buried during an outbreak of cholera in Mexican Guanajuato in 1833. These mummies were discovered in the city's cemetery, making Guanajuato one of the top tourist attractions in Mexico. True, the attraction is very creepy.

Scientists believe that the bodies were exhumed between 1865 and 1958. At that time, a new tax was introduced, according to which the relatives of the deceased had to pay a tax for a place in the cemetery, otherwise the body was exhumed. As a result, ninety percent of the remains were exhumed, because there were few willing to pay such a tax. Of these, only two percent of the bodies were naturally mummified. Mummified bodies, which were kept in a special building at the cemetery, became available to tourists in the 1900s.

Cemetery workers began letting visitors in for a few pesos to enter the building where the bones and mummies were stored. The site was later turned into a museum called El Museo De Las Momias ("Mummy Museum"). A law banning forced exhumation was passed in 1958, but the original mummies are still on display in this museum.

The mummies of the Mexican city of Guanajuato are the result of weather and soil conditions in which mummification occurs. The bodies of dead people who were not taken away for burial by relatives often became public exhibits. During epidemics, bodies were buried immediately after death to prevent the spread of the disease. Scientists believe that some people were buried while still alive, and that is why an expression of horror is imprinted on their faces. But there is another opinion: facial expression is the result of post-mortem processes.

At the same time, it is known that a certain Ignatia Aguilar was indeed buried alive. The woman suffered from a strange disease, due to which her heart stopped several times. During one of the attacks, her heart seemed to stop for more than a day. Believing that Ignatia had died, her relatives buried her. When the exhumation was carried out, it turned out that her body was lying face down, and the woman was biting her hand, and there was baked blood in her mouth.

The museum, which has at least 111 mummies on display, is located directly above the site where the mummies were first discovered. This museum also houses the smallest mummy in the world - the fetus of a pregnant woman who fell victim to cholera. Some of the mummies are exhibited in the preserved clothes in which they were buried. The mummies of Guanajuato are a prominent part of Mexican folk culture, emphasizing the national holiday "Day of the Dead" (El Dia de los Muertos) in the best possible way.

No less interesting and. Scientists still cannot unravel the recipe according to which Pirogov's body was mummified, and people come to church to bow to him like holy relics and ask for help.