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Police in Peru made a surprise discovery when they searched a delivery man who came to their attention for acting drunk at an archaeological site in Puno. Inside his cooler bag was an ancient mummy. The man said that he had been sharing his room with the bandaged mummy and considered it "a kind of spiritual girlfriend". He had put the remains in the bag to show them off to his friends, he said. He explained that he kept "Juanita", as he had nicknamed the mummy, in a box in his room, next to the TV. He added that it...

The mummy, known as "Juanita" or the "Inca Ice Maiden", was an Inca girl who is thought to have been sacrificed in a ritual more than 500 years ago. Scientists worked with a specialist in facial reconstruction to build a silicon bust of the mummy. Johan Reinhard, the US archaeologist who first found the mummy in 1995, said the bust "makes her even more alive". A team of Peruvian and Polish scientists worked with Oscar Nilsson, a specialist in facial reconstruction from Sweden, to build the silicon bust of the teenage girl. The scientists said body scans, skull measurements, DNA...

The Skiles mummy was found in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of South Texas. Up to 150 mummified bodies have been found in the area, but one adult male from around 1,200 years ago attracted particular attention for study due to how well-preserved his naturally mummified remains were. As well as having a full head of hair – rarely found in the other mummified remains – he had "a very large desiccated fecal mass, which encompasses the majority of what would have been the gastrointestinal tract", according to the authors of one study.Given the size of the backup, the fecal matter...

Egypt 'starts work on mummifying shark that devoured Russian tourist so it can be displayed in a MUSEUM after removing victim's head, chest and arms from the predator's stomach' Vladimir Popov, 23, was mauled to death by a tiger shark at Egyptian resort It comes after a 68-year-old was killed by shark at a nearby resort last year Egypt has started work on mummifying the shark that devoured a Russian tourist so that it can be displayed that it can be displayed at a museum, according to a report. The body parts of Vladimir Popov, 23, who was eaten alive...

Scientists may soon get glimpse of mummy's face 6/26/2005, 5:49 p.m. ET The Associated Press NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. (AP) — Pesed has called a western Pennsylvania college home for about 120 years, but her caretakers don't know what she looks like. But that might change now that researchers have a CT scan of the 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummy. Officials believe the scan will provide enough information to allow a forensic artist to construct a bust of Pesed, a mummy from the Nile River town of Akhmim, about 350 miles south of Cairo. Pesed has been the property of Westminster College, located...

* The head was brought home by a British soldier who fought in Egypt during WWI * Remained in soldier's family for a century and is now being sold by a descendant A rare 2,800-year-old mummified Egyptian head brought to the UK by a British soldier during the First World War has gone on sale. The artefact, which was stuffed away in a cupboard for decades because 'it is not everyone's cup of tea', has an eye-watering price tag of £20,000. It has been carbon dated to between 800 BC and 750 BC. The head remained in the unnamed soldier's...

A missing Illinois man was found by his wife "mummified" in the storage space of his "hoarder home" eight months after he went missing in 2022. The Troy Police Department had asked for help from the public to look for 53-year-old Richard Maedge after his wife Jennifer Maedge reported him missing on the afternoon of April 27.Police said that the man had told his wife he was leaving early for work that morning and that when he went missing, his car was at their home and his wallet and keys were left behind. After eight months of looking for her...

A Peruvian mummy up to 800 years old was discovered inside a cooler bag of a food deliveryman who referred to the ancient male corpse as his “spiritual girlfriend” whom he dubbed “Juanita.” -excerpt - The man, identified as 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo, revealed in an interview with the local news outlet ... that he had been sharing his room with the centuries-old skeleton, whom he nicknamed “Juanita,” having mistakenly assumed it was female.

An illustration depicting the ancient Egyptian process of embalming. (Nikola Nevenov) ********************************************************* An analysis of the residue on ceramics found in an ancient embalming workshop has given us new insights into how ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Even more astonishingly, a team of scientists has been able to link different substances to the specific parts of the body on which they were used. This discovery is, in part, thanks to the residues themselves, which were studied using biomolecular techniques; but many of the vessels were intact, including not just the names of their contents, but instructions for their use. "We...

Egyptologists have uncovered a Pharaonic tomb near the capital Cairo containing what may be the oldest and "most complete" mummy yet to be discovered in the country, the excavation team leader said on Thursday (Jan 26. The 4,300-year-old mummy was found at the bottom of a 15-metre shaft in a recently uncovered group of fifth and sixth dynasty tombs near the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Zahi Hawass, director of the team, told reporters. The mummy, of a man named Hekashepes, was in a limestone sarcophagus that had been sealed in mortar.

Scientists found evidence of tattoos while studying female mummies from the Egyptian town of Deir el-Medina...One of the mummies came from a looted tomb and had already been unwrapped. Examining the mummified skin, the researchers came across the first tattoo on the lower back, which appeared to show a bowl, a purification ritual, and the Egyptian god Bes. This god was known for protecting women and children, with a particular focus on childbirth.Because the second mummy was still wrapped, researchers analyzed it via infrared photography... The mummy turned out to be of a middle-aged woman and featured a different tattoo...

Researchers say a set of ancient tools found in a box at a Canberra university is the world's oldest known complete tattoo kit, thought to be made from human bones. Key points: •The tools were fashioned out of bones, some of which researchers say were most likely human bones •Researchers say the bones may come from the graves of the tattooist's relatives •Radiocarbon dating proved the kit was about 2,700 years old, dating back to the beginning of Polynesian cultures Four tattooing implements were found along with what was believed to be an ink pot on Tonga's Tongatapu Island in...

Once dismissed as an “odd-looking little artifact,” the tool pushes back evidence for tattooing in the U.S. Southwest by a millennium. The tool ismade from a bundle of prickly pear cactus spines, their tips saturated with dark pigment, inserted into a handle carved from lemonade sumac and bound with yucca fiber. Some 2,000 years ago, a tattooist in what’s now southeast Utah used this tool to hand-poke a design into someone’s skin. After the point of one of the cactus spines broke off, the tool was likely tossed into a trash heap. It remained there for centuries, in a pile...

Jerusalem, Jul 9, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA).- In the Old City of Jerusalem it's hard to escape the ancient history that's still alive within its walls. A simple smartphone search can send you on a walk to a centuries-old shop, bring you to the steps of a millennium-old Church, or lead you past the 3,000 year-old Temple Mount – all bursting with people and energy. But it's only within the stone walls of Razzouk Ink that the modern pilgrim can have that history etched onto his or her body for the rest of their lives. And Christian pilgrims have...

The Razzouk family has tattooed pilgrims arriving to the Holy Land for the last 700 yearsJerusalem’s “Old City” was, until the mid-19th century, the entire urban area of the Holy City. Today, it only occupies a small area (actually, less than one kilometer) in East Jerusalem, but it is still home to several of the most important religious sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike: that’s where you find the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock, and the Kotel. But the Old City is also home to the Razzouk’s tattoo shop. A sign on the door identifies it unequivocally:...

St Pete researchers find tattoos on ancient Siberian mummies St PETERSBURG, March 28 (Itar-Tass) - Infrared photography methods, used for the first time by researchers at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, have made it possible to discover tattoos in ancient mummies excavated in the Pazyryk mounds in the south Siberian Altai Mountains. The mounds date back to the 8th to 5th centuries BC. The discovery was made on three mummies – two that used to be female bodies and one male body -- that were produced by special treatment for burial ceremonies. One more male mummy was found in...

Tattoos - The Ancient and Mysterious History By Cate Lineberry Humans have marked their bodies with tattoos for thousands of years. These permanent designs—sometimes plain, sometimes elaborate, always personal—have served as amulets, status symbols, declarations of love, signs of religious beliefs, adornments and even forms of punishment. Joann Fletcher, research fellow in the department of archaeology at the University of York in Britain, describes the history of tattoos and their cultural significance to people around the world, from the famous " Iceman," a 5,200-year-old frozen mummy, to today’s Maori. What is the earliest evidence of tattoos? In terms of tattoos...

The body of the ice-maiden (aka Ukok Princess, etc.) is finally returning to the Altai Republic in a region close to Russia's frontiers with Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan. Her well-preserved remains were discovered in 1993 by Novosibirsk scientist Natalia Polosmak during an archeological expedition. After discovery, she was taken to a scientific institute in Novosibirsk. The local people in the Altai believe the princess's removal led to bad consequences, causing a crash of the helicopter carrying her remains away and a spate of 300 earth tremors in a six month period. Upon return, she'll be kept in a special mausoleum...

By using an innovative non-invasive photographic technique, European researchers have managed to locate and map the extensive set of tattoos on the exquisitely preserved remains of Ötzi the Iceman. Remarkably, they even found a previously unknown tattoo on his ribcage. Ötzi's frozen remains were discovered by two German tourists in the Ötzal Alps on the border between Austria and Italy in 1991. He lived around 3,300 BCE and represents Europe's oldest natural human mummy. Because he was so well preserved in ice, he has provided anthropologists with a slew of information about Copper Age (or Chalcolithic) humans. ... It's worth...

Otzi the legendary “Iceman” wasn't alone when he was mummified on a glacier 5,300 years ago. With him were gut microbes known to cause some serious tummy trouble. These bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, are providing fresh evidence about Otzi's diet and poor health in the days leading up to his murder. Intriguingly, they could also help scientists better understand who his people were and how they came to live in the region. ... Discovered in the 1990s, Otzi lived in what are today the Eastern Italian Alps, where he was naturally mummified by ice after his violent death. The body is...