Mummies Around the World
Cultures the world over have found ways to preserve the dead in almost any environment.
Published 4 Sept 2018, 11:30 BST
Visitors peer at the mummified remains of Ramses II in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. The pharaoh, who reigned from 1279-1213 B.C., is considered one of the most powerful rulers of the Egyptian Empire.
Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic Creative
The Grauballe Man is a natural mummy formed by centuries of submersion in a peat bog. The man had his throat slit and was thrown in a bog more than 2,000 years ago in what is modern-day Denmark.
Photograph by Robert Harding Picture Library, National Geographic Creative
A crocodile mummy offers an enigmatic smile thousands of years after its death. Animals were mummified in ancient Egyptas treasured pets or living representations of a god.
Photograph by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic Creative
Jeremy Bentham's clothed skeleton, padded out with hay and topped with a wax head, sits in University College, London. The English philosopher, who died in 1832, asked to be preserved as an ‘auto-icon.’
Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic Creative
An archaeologist removes artefacts near a Inca mummy bundle. Thousands of the 500-year-old bundles contain human remains wrapped in textiles and are sometimes topped with false heads.
Photograph by Ira Block, National Geographic Creative
The leg of a bog body found in 1944. Parts of bog bodies, preserved for thouands of years in peat, are often found by farmers cutting the rich organic matter for fuel.
Photograph by Robert Clark&& National Geographic Creative
An Egyptian queen's pet gazelle was readied for eternity with the same lavish care as a member of the royal family. It accompanied its owner to the grave in about 945 B.C.
Photograph by Richard Barnes, National Geographic Creative
An unwrapped Inca mummy in Lima, Peru. Men, women, and children would be wrapped in yards of elaborate textiles and naturally mummify after centuries in the arid climate.
Photograph by Ira Block, National Geographic Creative
The mummified remains of two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo rest in Palermo’s Capuchin Catacombs. Although she died of pneumonia in 1920, her body is remarkably preserved.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, National Geographic Creative
Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt from 1479 to 1458 B.C., is best known for being a female leader who was depicted as a male pharaoh. While her tomb was discovered in 1903, her mummy was identified only in 2006.
Photograph by Kenneth, National Geographic Creative
