A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions. Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least the early 17th century.
Saqqara, also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English, is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara contains numerous pyramids, including the Pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Pyramid, and a number of mastaba tombs. Located some 30 km (19 mi) south of modern-day Cairo, Saqqara covers an area of around 7 by 1.5 km.
The ancient Egyptians had an elaborate set of funerary practices that they believed were necessary to ensure their immortality after death. These rituals included mummifying the body, casting magic spells, and burials with specific grave goods thought to be needed in the afterlife.
In ancient Egypt, cats were represented in social and religious scenes dating as early as 1980 BC. Several ancient Egyptian deities were depicted and sculptured with cat-like heads such as Mafdet, Bastet and Sekhmet, representing justice, fertility, and power, respectively. The deity Mut was also depicted as a cat and in the company of a cat.
The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320, is an Ancient Egyptian tomb located next to Deir el-Bahari, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor.
The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro holds an extensive mineral collection rooted in Cornwall's mining and engineering heritage. The county's artistic heritage is reflected in the museum's art collection. Through the Courtney Library the museum also provides a collection of rare books and manuscripts to help with education, research and the discovery of Cornish life and culture.
The Chinchorro mummies are mummified remains of individuals from the South American Chinchorro culture, found in what is now northern Chile. They are the oldest examples of artificially mummified human remains, having been buried up to two thousand years before the Egyptian mummies. The earliest mummy that has been found in Egypt dates from around 3000 BCE, while the oldest purposefully artificially preserved Chinchorro mummy dates from around 5050 BCE.
Kynžvart Castle is a historic château located near Lázně Kynžvart in the Cheb District of the Czech Republic. The building's architecture is in the neoclassical style. After extensive renovations, the castle was reopened to the public in 2000. A guided tour takes visitors through 25 rooms of the castle.
Betliar is a village and municipality in the Rožňava District in the Košice Region of eastern Slovakia, known for its manor house.
The Tomb of Two Brothers is an ancient sepulchre in Deir Rifeh, Egypt. It contains the chamber tomb of the ancient Egyptian high status priests Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht, which dates from the 12th Dynasty. The whole tomb group is now in the Manchester Museum.
The Gebelein predynastic mummies are six naturally mummified bodies, dating to approximately 3400 BC from the Late Predynastic period of Ancient Egypt. They were the first complete predynastic bodies to be discovered. The well-preserved bodies were excavated at the end of the nineteenth century by Wallis Budge, the British Museum Keeper for Egyptology, from shallow sand graves near Gebelein in the Egyptian desert.
Animal mummification was common in ancient Egypt. Animals were an important part of Egyptian culture, not only in their role as food and pets, but also for religious reasons. Many different types of animals were mummified, typically for four main purposes: to allow people's beloved pets to go on to the afterlife, to provide food in the afterlife, to act as offerings to particular deities, and because some were seen as physical manifestations of specific deities that the Egyptians worshipped. Bastet, the cat goddess, is an example of one such deity. In 1888, an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near Istabl Antar discovered a mass grave of felines, ancient cats that were mummified and buried in pits at great numbers.
The Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Croatia is an archaeological museum with over 450,000 varied artifacts and monuments, gathered from various sources but mostly from Croatia and in particular from the surroundings of Zagreb.
The coffin of Nedjemankh is a gilded ancient Egyptian coffin from the late Ptolemaic Period. It once encased the mummy of Nedjemankh, a priest of the ram-god Heryshaf. The coffin was purchased by the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art in July 2017 to be the centerpiece of an exhibition entitled "Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin." The Metropolitan Museum of Art repatriated Nedjemankh and his coffin to Egypt in 2019, before the scheduled closure of the exhibition.
The archaeology of Ancient Egypt is the study of the archaeology of Egypt, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. Egyptian archaeology is one of the branches of Egyptology.
Bab el-Gasus, also known as the Priestly Cache and the Second Cache, was a cache of ancient 21st dynasty Egyptian mummies found at Deir el-Bahari in 1891. It was excavated by French Egyptologists Eugène Grebaut and Georges Daressy, with Urbain Bouriant and Ahmed Kamal, on the direction of Mohamed Ahmed Abd al‑Rassul, who had also revealed the location of the Royal Cache in 1881. The tomb entrance was located on the flat area just outside the precinct wall in front of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. The find was significant for Egyptology, particularly in respect of religion, mummification, and coffin studies. It is the largest intact tomb ever found in Egypt. Today, the contents of the tomb are spread between 30 museums worldwide.
Ta-Kr-Hb is a female mummy who was donated to the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland in 1936, believed to be the remains of a princess or priestess of Thebes. The remains are estimated to be up to 2,700 or around 3000 years old. The name of the mummy 'Ta-Kr-Hb' and her status as a princess were revealed by the hieroglyphs on the lid of her coffin.
The Qurna Queen was an ancient Egyptian woman who lived in the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt, around 1600 BC to 1500 BC, whose mummy is now in the National Museum of Scotland. She was in her late teens or early twenties at the time of her death, and her mummy and coffin were found in El-Kohr, near the Valley of the Kings. Damage to her coffin means that her name has been lost. The quality of the grave goods and the location of the burial have been used to argue that the inhabitant of the grave was a member of the royal family. If this is the case, it would mean that the site's mummies, coffins and grave goods would make up the only complete royal burial exported from Egypt in its entirety.
