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Arts & Entertainment 'Mummies' Takes Over the Natural History Museum
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Mummies' Takes Over the Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum exhibit Mummies: New Secrets From the Tombs features 19 of the carefully wrapped and preserved bodies. Items include a painted coffin found in Egypt (left) and a fragment of a limestone sarcophagus that dates back more than 2,000 years.
Posted: Thursday, October 1, 2015 5:00 am
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Even before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1922 and turned Egyptology into a household word, people were fascinated by mummies. The Natural History Museum is the latest to jump on that sarcophagus — er, bandwagon.
The Exposition Park facility last week opened Mummies: New Secrets From the Tombs. The world premiere exhibition features one of the largest collections of mummies in the world. It runs through Jan. 18, 2016.
The touring exhibit was organized by the Field Museum in Chicago, and is based on a previous two-mummy show at that facility that drew large crowds. The NHM installment features 19 mummies, many of which have been kept in the Field Museum’s vaults since their last appearance at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
“What we have in museums should be displayed,” said Dr. Ryan Williams, from the Field Museum’s Integrative Research Center. “So we developed a larger, touring exhibit to allow more people the chance to see these rare artifacts and experience the stories about these individuals and their societies and civilizations.”
Mummies naturally spark thoughts of Egypt, pyramids and treasure-filled tombs, but the NHM exhibit reveals another side of the story. One portion of the show delves into small fishing villages along the coast of Chile and Peru that were practicing mummification 2,000 years before the Egyptians. Mummies includes comprehensive galleries for both Peru and Egypt, highlighting the surprising similarities and vast differences between the distant countries.
For instance, while Peru and Egypt both have dry, sandy climates that enable mummification, how people in each country prepared their dead for burial was quite different — the Egyptians embalmed those who had passed, removed all the organs, and placed each organ in a different canopic jar. The Peruvians, meanwhile, mummified their dead intact.
Likewise, each culture differed in how they handled the journey into the afterlife. The Egyptians famously sealed their mummies in tombs, while the Peruvians often entered the burial chambers to replenish food and drink and celebrate with their departed ancestors.
The exhibit also shows how the burial traditions changed in Peru across the different cultures of the Chinchorro, Nazca and Inca. The Egyptian mummification process remained essentially the same through all its dynasties.
The 19 mummies on display include two of the oldest ever found. One is from pre-Incan Peru and is more than 6,000 years old. Another, from pre-dynastic Egypt, dates from between 4,000 and 3,100 BC. Other examples include a mummy known as the “Gilded Lady,” who was a 40-year-old woman from Roman-era Egypt when she died. The “Minirdis” mummy was a 14-year-old Egyptian boy.
High-Tech Twist
The exhibit offers a look at the more traditional trappings of a mummy showcase, such as fragments of carved stone coffins, elaborate death masks, ceramics, jewelry and the ritualized burial figurines, known as shabti, that are placed in tombs to help the Egyptian dead on their journey. Mummies also has a surprising number of mummified animals such as birds, gazelles and even baby crocodiles.
“The Egyptians mummified anything and everything,” said Dr. Jim Phillips, curator of Ancient Egypt for the Field Museum.
While Mummies spins from the ancient past, it also has a futuristic, high-tech side. The exhibition reveals how CT scanning technology virtually “unwraps” the mummies and gives visitors a glimpse under the bandages, all while keeping the delicate sarcophagi intact. The technique allowed archaeologists to determine the ages and genders of many of the mummies, and even what diseases they dealt with. One mummy on display showed signs of tuberculosis. Another suffered from typhus.
Using some of the 3D scans, French artist and forensic sculptor Élisabeth Daynès was able to create skull models of some of the mummies, which were in turn used to build re-creations of how the people likely looked when they lived thousands of years ago. These are displayed in the exhibit.
The high-tech side has an interactive element, with two touchscreens that allow for hands-on manipulation of the CT scans that gave archeologists their immersive look into the past.
“This much-anticipated exhibit, which offers an intensely close-up look at the Field Museum’s preeminent collection of mummies, fits very well with the Natural History Museum’s purpose to inspire wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds,” said NHM President and Director Jane Pisano.
Just as Carter’s discovery of King Tut led to immensely popular museum exhibits in the 1970s, NHM officials are anticipating big crowds arriving at Exposition Park. To deal with the onslaught, the museum is selling advance, timed tickets for the four-month run.
Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs runs through Jan. 18, 2016, at the Natural History Museum, 900 Exposition Boulevard, (213) 763-3666 or nhm.org.
© Los Angeles Downtown News 2015
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