The
mummies of two ancient Egyptians are buried deep within the foundations of
a McDonalds restaurant in Tamworth (Staffordshire), England, according to
Tamworth historian John Harper.
McDonalds converted
Tamworth's Palace movie theater into a restaurant, inheriting two mummies
that had been entombed there 70 years earlier when the theater was built.
McMummies in the basement?
THE FACTS:
Around 1935, local Tamworth
resident Reverend William McGregor needed to dispose of some Egyptian
mummies. He had traveled to Egypt, gathering many artifacts (including
mummies), and planned to begin a museum in his home. Whether he actually
opened a museum isn't clear; what is clear is that he decided to bury a
few of the mummies he collected in his garden. When he realized that the
conditions of the garden were causing the mummies to decompose, he decided
to look for an alternative burial site.
At the same time, the
Palace Theater was under construction. According to the Harper, McGregor
thought that the theater's foundation looked "like the kind of burial
sites he had seen in Egypt, so he asked the foreman if he would mind if he
deposited a couple of his mummies in the foundations." The foreman
agreed.
Recently McDonalds learned
of the mummies in the foundation. A McDonalds spokesman said, "We
understand they are well within the foundations so an excavation is out of
the question unfortunately."
No one knows the identity
of the mummies. As historian Harper explained, "During the 1920s and
30s there was a craze for [mummies] and people were shipping mummies over
here by the boatload."
