: 21°01′11″ n. w. /  101°15′58″ W. d.21.0199278° s. w. 101.2663833° W. d. / 21.0199278; -101.2663833(G) (I)

K:Museums founded in 1969

History and exhibition of the museum

The museum houses 111 mummies (59 mummies are on display) exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, the relatives lost the right to the burial site, 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 dated from 1833, when there was a cholera epidemic in the city. According to other sources, the mummies on display in the museum belong to people who died in the years 1850-1950. IN late XIX

- at the 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 kept. The official date of establishment of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when mummies were exhibited in glass shelves. In 2007, the museum's exhibition was redistributed according to various topics. According to the official website, the museum is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Since the same 2007, 22 mummies have been studied 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, which featured 36 mummies from the museum. The first of these exhibitions opened in October 2009 in Detroit.

Gallery

TicketsMomiasGTO.JPG

Ticket office and entrance to the museum store

SouvenirsMomiasGTO.JPG

Souvenir shop next to the mummies museum

Mummy01 guanajuato.jpg

One of the dressed mummies

Guanajuato mummy 01.jpg

Fragment of the hand of one of the mummies

Mummy03 guanajuato.jpg

Reclining mummy of a child

Mummy04 guanajuato.jpg

Mummies from the museum exhibition

see also

Write a review on the article "Mummy Museum (Guanajuato)"

Notes

• Links
• www.mummytombs.com
• , www3.sympatico.ca

, slideshow on www.youtube.com

Excerpt characterizing the Museum of Mummies (Guanajuato)
“For the sake of... wow wow wow wow!...” was heard through the ranks. The gloomy soldier walking on the left, shouting, looked back at Bagration with such an expression as if he was saying: “we know it ourselves”; the other, without looking back and as if afraid to have fun, with his mouth open, shouted and walked by.
They were ordered to stop and take off their backpacks.
Bagration rode around the ranks passing by and dismounted from his horse. He gave the Cossack the reins, took off and gave his cloak, straightened his legs and adjusted the cap on his head. The head of the French column, with officers in front, appeared from under the mountain.
"With God blessing!" Bagration said 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 working, he walked forward along the uneven field. Prince Andrei felt that some irresistible force was pulling him forward, and he experienced great happiness. [Here occurred the attack 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 the island of St. Helena said: "Quelques bataillons russes montrerent de l"intrepidite." [The Russians behaved valiantly, and a rare thing in war, two masses of infantry marched decisively against each other, and neither of the two yielded until the clash." Napoleon's words: [Several Russian battalions showed fearlessness.]
The French were already getting close; Already Prince Andrei, walking next to Bagration, clearly distinguished the baldrics, red epaulettes, even the faces of the French. (He clearly saw one old French officer, who, with twisted legs in boots, was hardly walking up the hill.) Prince Bagration did not give a new order and still walked silently in front of the ranks. Suddenly, one shot cracked between the French, another, a third... and smoke spread through all the disorganized enemy ranks and gunfire crackled. Several of our men fell, including the round-faced officer, who was walking so cheerfully and diligently. But at the same instant the first shot rang out, Bagration looked back and shouted: “Hurray!”
“Hurray aa aa!” a drawn-out scream echoed along our line and, overtaking Prince Bagration and each other, our people ran down the mountain in a discordant, but cheerful and animated crowd after the upset French.

The attack of the 6th Jaeger ensured the retreat of the right flank. In the center, the action of the forgotten battery of Tushin, who managed to light Shengraben, stopped the movement of the French. The French put out the fire, carried by the wind, and gave time to retreat. The retreat of the center through the ravine was hasty and noisy; however, the troops, retreating, did not mix up their commands. But the left flank, which was simultaneously attacked and bypassed by the superior forces of the French under the command of Lannes and which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and Pavlograd hussar regiments, was upset. Bagration sent Zherkov to the general of the left flank with orders to immediately retreat.
Zherkov smartly, without removing his hand from his cap, touched his horse and galloped off. But as soon as he drove away from Bagration, his strength failed 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 convey the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the regimental commander of the very regiment that was represented at Braunau by 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 a misunderstanding occurred. Both commanders were very irritated against each other, and while things had been going on on the right flank for a long time and the French had already begun their offensive, both commanders were busy in negotiations that were intended to insult each other. The regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were very little prepared for the upcoming task. The people of the regiments, from soldier to general, did not expect battle and calmly went about peaceful affairs: feeding horses in the cavalry, collecting firewood in the infantry.

Some mummies that frighten visitors to world capitals today were found thousands of years ago. As for the mummies of the Mexican city of Guanajuato, they ended up in the museum only a few centuries later. Between 1865 and 1958, city residents whose relatives were buried in the local graves were required to pay a tax. If someone evaded payment for three years in a row, the bodies of his loved ones were immediately dug up.

Because the soil in this region of Mexico was extremely dry, the corpses looked more like well-preserved mummies. The first mummy dug up is considered to be the body of Dr. Leroy Remigio, which was found on June 9, 1865. The dug up bodies were kept in a crypt in the cemetery, and relatives could still ransom the corpse. This practice continued until 1894, when enough bodies accumulated in the crypt to open a museum of mummies in Guanajuato.

In 1958, residents stopped paying taxes for space in the cemetery, but decided to leave the mummies in the crypt, which soon became a local attraction and began to be popular with tourists. Yes, initially travelers came straight to the crypt to see the bodies of mummies, but soon the collection of dead bodies became exhibits of a separate museum.

Since all the mummies were formed naturally, they look much more terrifying than embalmed bodies. It is remarkable that the Guanajuato mummies, with their bony and distorted faces, are still dressed in the decorations in which they were buried.

Perhaps the most shocking exhibits of the museum of mummies for visitors will be the buried body of a pregnant woman and the wrinkled bodies of children. The museum also houses the smallest mummy on the planet, which is no larger than a loaf of bread.

On this moment It is not known exactly how a corpse, having been buried for more than a century, could have been so successfully preserved. As already mentioned, scientists suggest that the reason for this is the characteristics of the local soil, but there is also an opinion that the local climate contributed to the mummification of corpses.

The museum has a shop that sells sugar skulls, stuffed mummies, and postcards with dark humor in Spanish.

A museum can be found in almost every city. Museums often display works of art, works famous masters And so on. But some museums contain completely different exhibits. Looking at them, a person experiences horror, interest and a craving for the supernatural. One of these institutions is the Museum of Screaming Mummies, located in the small Mexican town of Guanajuato.

Guanajuato is located in the central part of Mexico, 350 kilometers from the capital. In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards conquered these lands from the Aztecs, after which they founded Fort Santa Fe. This land attracted the Spaniards because it was home to valuable mines in which tons of gold and silver could be mined.

History of the city of Guanajuato

The Aztecs called the area described above Cuanas Huato, which translated means “the place where frogs live among the hills.” When the Spaniards conquered the lands, they renamed them and began to mine gold for the king. In the eighteenth century, the precious mines were almost completely depleted. Gold miners turned their attention to silver, of which there was still a lot left in the mines. For several centuries, the Spanish town was considered the richest and most profitable. It was decorated in every possible way with architecture, which partially survives to this day.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Mexico gained independence, thanks to which ordinary peasants were able to get rid of colonial status. Since then, a lot has changed: the government established new orders, carried out reforms, and so on. Only one thing has remained unchanged: the desire of the rich to increase their income. Taxes increased continuously. Since 1865, even places in the cemetery became paid, which was especially dissatisfied ordinary people. Now, if they did not pay for a place in the cemetery, after five years the body of the deceased was exhumed and transferred to the basement. If the relatives managed to pay off the huge debt, the body was returned to the grave.

The victims of the new law are the lonely dead

The bodies of the dead, who simply had no relatives, were the first to suffer. The second to suffer were those whose relatives could not pay the huge payment by the standards of that time. At first, the bones of those exhumed lay peacefully in the basements. Then the enterprising owners of the cemetery decided to turn the basements into “museums”, after visiting which one could “enjoy” the most terrible exhibits. Since 1969, terrible exhibits began to be shown openly to eyewitnesses, without hiding from law enforcement agencies. The basements were combined into a single museum, which received official status.

Creepy remains of unfortunate people

The number of bodies that had to be exhumed was incredibly huge. Not all of those “expelled from the cemetery” were transferred to the museum. Only the most terrible bodies were selected there, those that could attract attention and at the same time shock wealthy visitors. Only those corpses that did not decompose during their stay in the grave, but naturally turned into mummies, were placed behind the glass of the museum. It should be noted that in Mexico they did not specifically embalm the dead, since this was a costly matter and incorrect from a religious point of view.

The most famous “screaming” exhibits

The first and most famous exhibit of the creepy museum is the body of Dr. Remigo Leroy, who was quite wealthy during his lifetime. Unfortunately, he had no relatives left who could pay for a place in the cemetery, so he was exhumed, despite financial condition. Leroy was dug up in 1865. The body was initially designated as “storage unit No. 214.”

In the exhibit described above you can see the suit in relatively good condition. It is made of expensive fabric, which is why it has been preserved for so long. Most of the “flashy” exhibits do not have clothing, as it simply rotted in its time. Museum workers confiscated some of the clothes, commenting that they smelled too much of death. The disgusting aroma could not be overcome by chemicals.

The people whose remains can now be seen in the museum in Guanajuato died for various reasons. Some were killed by the cholera epidemic in 1833, others died from occupational diseases of miners. In addition, it contains the remains of those who died a natural death from old age. The most interesting thing is that there are much more women in this museum than men. In those days, the fair sex had a more difficult life.

Scientists were unable to identify all the remains, but they did identify some. For example, the remains of Ignacia Aguilar. During her lifetime, this woman was a decent mother, a good wife and housewife. When her body was exhumed, they were very frightened, as she was lying in a strange position: her hands were pressed to her face, and her clothes were pulled up. Researchers suggested that she was buried alive, confusing death with lethargic sleep. Blood clots were found in Ignacia's mouth. Most likely, she woke up already in the coffin, tried to get out, and when she realized that it was useless, in panic and from lack of air, she tore her mouth with her hands.

No less sad was the fate of another interesting exhibit, also a woman who was strangled. There were fragments of a rope around her neck, which was not even removed from her during the funeral. Museum workers say that at the other end of the room there is the severed head of her husband, who turned out to be a murderer, for which he was executed.

It should be noted that open mouths, supposedly screaming, are not always a sign of death in terrible agony. Even a calmly deceased person can get such a terrifying facial expression if his jaw is poorly tied.

Perhaps everyone has seen some horror film at least once in their life in which the living dead attack people. These evil 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 modernity - the mummies of Guanajuato.

The Guanajuato Mummies are a collection of naturally mummified bodies buried during a cholera outbreak in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1833. These mummies were discovered in the city cemetery, after which Guanajuato became one of the main tourist attractions in Mexico. True, the attraction is very creepy.

Mummies in the Guanajuato Museum

Scientists believe 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 on a place in the cemetery, otherwise the body would be exhumed. In the end, ninety percent of the remains were exhumed because there were few people willing to pay such a tax. Of these, only two percent of the bodies were naturally mummified. The mummified bodies, which were kept in a special building in the cemetery, became available to tourists in the 1900s.

Mummy child

Cemetery workers began allowing visitors, for a few pesos, to enter the building where the bones and mummies were kept. The site was later turned into a museum called El Museo De Las Momias ("Museum of the Mummies"). A law banning forced exhumation was passed in 1958, but the museum still displays the original mummies.

Mummy hand from Guanajuato

The mummies of the Mexican city of Guanajuato are the result of weather and soil conditions under which mummification occurs. The bodies of deceased people who were not taken 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 the expression of horror was imprinted on their faces. But there is another opinion: facial expression is the result of post-mortem processes.

Mummy of Ignace Aguilar

Moreover, it is known that a certain Ignacia Aguilar was indeed buried alive. The woman suffered from a strange illness that caused her heart to stop several times. During one of the attacks, her heart seemed to stop for more than a day. Believing that Ignacia had died, her relatives buried her. When they exhumed it, 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.

Mummy from the Guanajuato Museum

The museum, which houses at least 111 mummies, is located directly above where the mummies were first discovered. This museum also houses the smallest mummy in the world - the fetus of a pregnant woman who became a victim of cholera. Some of the mummies are displayed wearing the preserved clothing in which they were buried. The Guanajuato mummies are a prominent part of the Mexican folk culture, emphasizing as best as possible National holiday"Day of the Dead" (El Dia de los Muertos).

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

A mummy is a specially processed chemical dead body a creature in which the process of tissue decomposition slows down. Mummies are stored for hundreds and even thousands of years, becoming a “window” into the ancient world. On the one hand, mummies look creepy; some people get goosebumps just looking at these wrinkled bodies, but on the other hand, they represent incredible historical value, keeping within themselves interesting information about life ancient world, customs, health and diet of our ancestors.

1. Screaming Mummy from the Guanajuato Museum

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico is one of the strangest and most terrible in the world, with 111 mummies collected here, which are the 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 on local cemetery"Pantheon of St. Paula".

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

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began charging fees for visiting the premises where they were kept. The official date of establishment of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when mummies were exhibited in glass shelves. Now the museum is visited annually by hundreds of thousands of tourists.

2. Mummy of a boy from Greenland (Kilakitsoq town)

Near the Greenlandic settlement of Qilakitsoq, located on the western coast of the largest island in the world, an entire family was discovered in 1972, mummified by low temperatures. Nine perfectly preserved bodies of the ancestors of the Eskimos, who died in Greenland at a time when the Middle Ages reigned in Europe, aroused keen interest of scientists, but one of them became famous throughout the world and beyond the scientific framework.

Belonging to a one-year-old child (as anthropologists found, who suffered from Down syndrome), it, more like some kind of doll, makes an indelible impression on visitors National Museum 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 in varying states 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 preserve his daughter’s body.

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

4. Juanita from the Peruvian Andes

Either still a girl, or already a girl (the age of death is said to be from 11 to 15 years), named Juanita, received worldwide fame, getting into the ranking of the best scientific discoveries according to Time magazine due to its preservation and creepy story, which scientists told after the discovery of a mummy in an ancient Inca settlement in the Peruvian Andes in 1995. Sacrificed to the gods in the 15th century, it has survived to this day almost perfect condition thanks to the ice of the Andean peaks.

As part of the exhibition of the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in the city of Arequipa, the mummy often goes on tour, exhibited, for example, at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington or at many venues in the country rising sun, generally different strange love to mummified bodies.

5. Knight Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz, Germany

This German knight lived from 1651 to 1702. After death, his body turned into a mummy naturally and is now on display for everyone to see.

According to legend, the knight Kalbutz was a great fan of taking advantage of the “right of the first night.” The loving Christian had 11 of his own children 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. Taken into custody, 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, he honestly It turned out to be enough for him to be acquitted and released. The knight died in 1702 at the age of 52 and was buried in the von Kalbutze family tomb. In 1783, the last representative of this dynasty died, and in 1794, restoration work 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 Christian Friedrich, had decayed. The latter turned into a mummy, which proved the fact that the loving knight was still an oathbreaker.

6. 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 distinctive features This mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set - the patron of royal power.

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

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

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

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

Similaun Man, who was about 5,300 years old at the time of his discovery, making him the oldest European mummy, was given the nickname Ötzi by scientists. Discovered on September 19, 1991 by a couple of German tourists while walking in the Tyrolean Alps, who came across the remains of a Chalcolithic inhabitant, perfectly preserved thanks to natural ice mummification, it created a real sensation in scientific world- nowhere in Europe have the bodies of our distant ancestors been found perfectly preserved to this day.

Now this tattooed mummy can be seen in the archaeological museum of Bolzano, Italy. Like many other mummies, Ötzi is allegedly shrouded in a 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 discovered 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 woven wool noose was tied around the girl’s neck, indicating that she had been executed for some crime or had been sacrificed. There is a trace of a wound in the collarbone area. The skin was not affected by decomposition, which is typical for swamp bodies.

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

A computed tomography scan determined that during her lifetime she had a curvature of the spine. Further research led to the conclusion that the cause of this was most likely damage to the vertebrae by bone tuberculosis.

10. The Man from the Rendsvüren Mire

Rendswühren Man, 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 examinations of the body 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.

The network is minor character science fiction films "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns", where he is depicted as a pharaoh who fell victim to his conspiracy high priest Imhotep.

12. 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 of the late 20th century. Researchers believe that the burial was made in the 5th-3rd centuries BC and dates back to the period of the Pazyryk culture of Altai.

During the excavations, archaeologists discovered that the deck in which the body of the buried woman was placed was filled with ice. That is why the woman’s mummy is well preserved. The burial was walled up in a layer of ice. This aroused great interest among archaeologists, since similar conditions Very ancient things could be well preserved. In the chamber they found six horses with saddles and harnesses, as well as a wooden larch block nailed 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 pulled 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 indicate 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 famous mummy 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 Sabancaya volcano. Next to this mummy, several more children's bodies were discovered, also mummified. Researchers suggest that these children were chosen among others due to their beauty, after which they walked many hundreds of kilometers across the country, were specially prepared and sacrificed to the gods at the top of the volcano.