Mummy Museums

Last Updated 28 October 2009

United States Museums: Maryland

Baltimore: 

The American Dime Museum once located at 1808 Maryland Avenue has now closed and auctioned off its exhibits. According to former museum volunteer, Ellen Garrity, the museum displayed an unusual assortment of mummies. These included:

Night’s Little One (19th Century): A mummy of "an unknown demon,” otherwise called "Devil Man." Wrapped in garbage bags, the mummy had the appearance of the devil: horns, teeth, and...evil--well, make that we-evils, for the Devil Man mummy was infested with the little bugs.

 

Dwarf Mummy (date unknown): Found in Mexico, this was an excellent example of natural mummification in extremely dry heat.

 

Sand Mummies: Sand mummies are of unknown tribal origin but are found periodically in arid regions throughout the world.  These male and female midget specimens were two such examples.  Another prominent sand mummy has been erroneously dubbed “The Thing” and appears as a roadside attraction in Arizona.

 

Peruvian Amazon: Over one thousand years old and over nine feet tall, this huge woman died and was naturally mummified in the cold, dry atmosphere of the Andes Mountains of Peru. She still wore the remains of her native clothing (and sandals).  (This was a Nelson Supply Company sideshow mummy.)

 

Egyptian Mummy from The Third Millennia: Im-Ho-Tation & His Transparent Glass Wand

The museum also exhibited a two-headed calf, and "Fivey," the beagle with five paws. For an extra treat, you could also see the Lincoln Coprolite, supposedly the last bowel movement President Lincoln had (salvaged from a privy at Ford's Theater). However, scientific analysis revealed that this coprolite is not Lincoln's (for it contains the residue of some Necco Wafers--these were not available until some 20 years after Lincoln's death).  

Thank you, Ellen! You can still peek at the front page of the museum's web site.

 

The Walters Art Museum at 600 N. Charles St. in Baltimore displays a number of mummies including 

Mery: "a mummy excavated between 1930 and 1931 in Deir el-Bahari, Western Thebes by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian expedition. It entered the Walters’ collection in 1941 by exchange with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has remained a mystery due to a lack of identifying inscriptions. CT scanning enabled scholars and scientists to learn, noninvasively and in a respectful manner, more about the subject. The results indicate that the mummy, encased in an elaborately decorated linen and plaster case, was a woman who was between 50 and 60 years old when she died.  She was quite small, even by the standards of her time, measuring only 57 3/8 inches. She suffered from severe dental problems, including at least sixteen abscesses, and one tooth had a dental prosthesis probably made from resin. Ancient dentists could not cure such dental problems so her death was possibly the result of septicemia caused by the abscesses." 

 

A small "counterfeit ritual" mummy in a black and gold coffin: The mummy is "made from a mixture of mud, sand, grain and seeds and wrapped in linen bandages. This counterfeit mummy is one of many examples of a corn mummy containing no body within the wrapping, but was nonetheless magically transformed into a “genuine” mummy through an ancient ritual. In this ritual, such figures were moistened so the grain would germinate and ensure resurrection in the afterlife. The corn mummy materials represent fertile land and allude to Osiris as god of fertility and vegetation. This corn mummy is on loan to the Walters from a private collection in Maryland." 

 

Make sure to visit the Chamber of Wonders at the museum as well for a few animal mummies (a 12-foot alligator, among others).