The Detmold child



Known as the Detmold child, this 8-to-10-month-old baby died in Peru around 4480 BC – more than 3000 years before the birth of Tutankhamun. According to a recent scan (PDF) using X-ray computed tomography, the child was born with a malformed heart.



"The heart defect has caused a flooding of the lungs and has most probably led, in combination with the pulmonary infection, to the death of the young child," according to Wilfried Rosendahl, curator of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany, home to many of the mummies in the exhibition. The baby also suffered from pneumonia and turricephaly, a disease that elongates the skull.



The CT scan also revealed a small, flat, rectangular object nestled beneath the fabric around the child's neck, assumed to be a kind of pendant, “perhaps an amulet made of bone," says Rosendahl.



(Image: J. Ihle/Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold, Germany)

Nes-pa-kai-schuti



This is the mummy and inner sarcophagus of Nes-pa-kai-schuti, a high-flying "priest of the singers" who died in 650 BC. His mummy was discovered in the necropolis of Akhmim, a city on the east bank of the river Nile.



Nes-pa-kai-schuti's coffin is made of wood from the fig-mulberry tree, Ficus sycomorus, and decorated with stucco linen. Inscriptions on the sarcophagus describe a temple dedicated to Akhmim's god of fertility, Min, who is depicted wearing a crown of feathers. Nes-pa-kai-schuti translates as "he to whom grand feathers belong".



The images painted on the walls of Nes-pa-kai-schuti's tomb are extremely unusual, according to Elizabeth Riefstahl, an expert in ancient Egyptian art who wrote about them in a 1951 paper entitled "An Egyptian portrait of an old man". They depict the hands of a female mourner with fingers spread. "It is rare to find the fingers of the hand separated," Riefstahl wrote. "Usually, whatever the gesture, the hand is treated as a single unit, with fingers pressed close together." Only three such examples of spread fingers have been discovered in tomb reliefs.



(Image: J. Ihle/Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold, Germany)

The Orlovitz family



This is the mummy of Michael Orlovitz, an 18th-century miller who was buried along with his family in the crypt of a church in Vác, Hungary. Their bodies, which quickly mummified in the crypt's cool, dry air, were discovered in 1994.



Birth registers and writing on the coffin tell the family's sad history. Michael and his wife Veronica lost three children before Michael himself died when he was 40 years old.



Veronica remarried almost immediately but died two years later at the age of 38. "Veronica suffered from tuberculosis and probably all her children and her husband got the illness from her, but died earlier," says Rosendahl.



(Image: American Exhibitions) Advertisement

Tattooed woman



This young woman with long black hair died in northern Chile over 3410 years ago. The warm desert air mummified her body, which was buried in a seated position, which allowed body fluids to drain away through gravity – "the most common burial position among pre-Columbian cultures", says Rosendahl.



A tattoo consisting of a dot inside an oval can be found on each of the woman's breasts and just below the left corner of her mouth. Very little is known about the Chiu Chiu culture from which she came, and we can only guess at the tattoos' purpose.



It has been suggested that they were meant to ward off evil spirits, but they may also have served to protect from illness, says Rosendahl. The practice of artificial mummification was pioneered in this region 8000 years ago by the Chinchorro people.



(Image: American Exhibitions)

Howler monkey



This monkey is wearing a skirt and a ruff fashioned from the feathers of a rhea, a large, flightless bird. It was buried alongside a human mummy of unknown age discovered at Grand Chaco in the Atacama desert in Argentina.



Pre-Columbian cultures living along the west coast of Peru and Chile often buried guinea pigs and llamas as "gifts" to the deceased. To find buried howler monkeys is rare, however.



The monkey was probably mummified naturally by the arid climate of the Atacama, the second driest place on Earth. "So far, we have no proof that animals were artificially mummified in pre-Columbian Latin America," says Rosendahl.



Monkeys were important cultural icons in the continent during this period. Vessels shaped like monkeys and coca-leaf bags decorated with monkey motifs have been discovered in many burial sites. Monkeys may also have been kept as pets.



(Image: American Exhibitions)