Famous Mummified Bodies

1. In 1971 workers in China digging an air raid shelter near the city of Changsha uncovered an enormous Han Dynasty-era tomb containing over 1,000 well-preserved artefacts, as well as the most perfectly preserved corpse ever found. The tomb belonged to Xin Zhui, wife of the Marquis of Han who died between 178145 BC, around 50 years of age. Her body is so well preserved that when found it was autopsied as if recently dead and her skin was supple, lim .....

King Tutankhamun

2. Tutankhamun approximately 1341 BC 1323 BC , was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. Tutankhamun was 9 years old when he became pharaoh and reigned for approximately 10 years, until his death. Tutankhamuns tomb in the Valley of the Kings was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 almost completely intact the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb ever found. Eternal life was the .....

Rosalia Lombardo

3. Rosalia Lombardo was an Italian child born in 1918 in Palermo, Sicily. She died on December 6th 1920 of pneumonia. Rosalias father was so sorely grieved upon her death that he approached Dr. Alfredo Salafia, a noted embalmer and taxidermist, to preserve her. She was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Sicily and one of the most well-known. Her preservation is such that it appears as if she were only sleepi .....

Tollund Man

4. Tollund Man is the naturally mummified corpse of a man (a bog body) who lived during the 4th century BC during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in May 1950, buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, which preserved his body. The head and face were so well-preserved that at the time he was mistaken for a recent murder victim, however, he was later found to have died over 1,500 years ago. Autopsies have shown that the cause of d .....

Ginger

5. Gingeris the nickname given to the naturally preserved body of an adult man (believed to be the earliest known ancient Egyptian mummified body), who despite having died more than 5,000 years ago, had perfectly preserved golden hair, and even toe and fingernails. Ginger was found in at Gebelein, Egypt, and dates to the Late Predynastic period, around 3400 BC, or earlier. Before mummification was developed, human remains were placed in shallow grav .....

Otzi the Iceman

6. otzi the Iceman (also known as Similaun Man or Man from Hauslabjoch) is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries ago). The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the otztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch, on the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from otztal, the region in which he was discovered. He is Europes oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Ch .....

Juanita

7. Juanita (The Ice Maiden) was discovered on the summit of Mount Ampato, Peru, on September 8th, 1995. She was 1214 when sacrificed 500 years ago a great honour for an Incan they believed the Ampato God supplied water and withheld avalanches in return for human sacrifices. A young girl, boy and the skeleton of a woman were discovered in later expeditions, as were items left as offerings to the gods. The eruption of nearby volcano Mount. Sabancaya .....

Saint Bernadette

8. Saint Bernadette was born Maria-Bernada Sobirs (7th January 1844 16th April 1879) and was a millers daughter from the town of Lourdes in southern France. Despite her body not being technically mummified, she definitely deserves a place on this list. From February 11th to July 16th 1858, she reported eighteen apparitions of a small young lady. Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, these claims were eventually declared to be worthy o .....

Vladimir Lenin

9. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (10th April 1870 21st January 1924) was one of the leading political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century, who masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in 1917, and was the architect and first head of the USSR. In 1918, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded. His long-term health was affected, and in May 1922 he suffered a stroke from which he never fully rec .....

Elmer McCurdy

10. Elmer McCurdy (January 1880 October 7th 1911) was an outlaw killed in a gunfight in the Osage Hills in Oklahoma. A newspaper account gave Elmers last words as Youll never take me alive! His body was taken to a funeral home in Oklahoma. When no one claimed the corpse, the undertaker embalmed it with an arsenic-based preservative and allowed people to see The Bandit Who Wouldnt Give Up for a nickel, placed in Elmers mouth, which the undertaker wou .....

Albert Einsteins Brain

11. Like many other geniuses, Albert Einsteins extraordinary intellect was always questioned .....

Galileos Finger

12. Galileo Galilei has been called the father(s) of modern science, observational astronomy and modern physics. He has a list of accomplishments as long as his arm, though his arm and fingers were under house arrest by the Inquisition during his last years of life due to his belief that the sun was the center of the universe, not the Earth. Of course when he died, his body wouldnt remain at his house and his finger didnt remain with his body either. .....

Lazzaro Spallanzanis Bladder

13. Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani was best known in the 1700 as paving the scientific highways for Louis Pasteur by proving that microbes traveled by air and could be killed by boiling like most other living organisms! He also proved that sexual reproduction in mammals requires a sperm and an ovum, and performed the first successful artificial insemination on a dog. But his bladder was supposedly the most useful part to be preserved since he .....

George Washingtons Hair

14. The father of the American nation, George Washingtons death was mourned by everyone in the United States. However, it was the aunt of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who asked for a lock of his hair in remembrance of the great man. In 1850, Longfellow had the lock of hair enclosed in a gold locket, which was later given to the Maine Historical Society per his aunt Eliza Wadsworths wishes. .....

St Bonaventures Arm

15. Our only holy figure on the list, this saints writing arm and hand have been preserved due to his work Commentary on the Four Books of Peter Lombard. St. Bonaventures arm was encased in a silver arm-shaped reliquary that now resides in his hometown of Bagnoregio, in the parish Church of St. Nicholas. Called a Seraphic Doctor by his colleagues, this 13th century Franciscan monk postulated that no ideas existed in nature, that they were all given t .....

Paul Brocas Brain

16. French physician and anthropologist Paul Broca is best known for his mid 1800s discovery of the speech production center of the brain in the frontal lobe. In addition to that area being named after him, he also famously founded a number of anthropological societies in France and beyond. Wonder what he would have to say about his brain being a display at the Museum of Man in Paris? .....

Major John W Powells Brain

17. This Major is the second American Civil War soldier on this list, though he only lost an arm in the war. John Wesley Powell was the founder and longtime director of the Bureau of American Ethnology though he was arguably most famous for his exploration of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon post-Civil War. The first of three brains on this list, Powells is on display in a vat at the Smithsonian institute. .....

Del Closes Skull

18. While Del Close had taught many improvisational giants in modern media such as Stephen Colbert, John Belushi, Tina Fey, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and others, it was perhaps his final request that wound up being the cruelest joke. Close has wanted his skull donated to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago so he could play Yorrick in Hamlet. While his creative partner Charna Halpern tried to make it happen, no medical organization would allow his skull to .....

Dan Sickles Leg

19. A Union general who lost his leg to a cannon at the Battle of Gettysburg, Major General Dan Sickle was not a brilliant man. After seeing high ground in front of his troops, he ordered them to move about a mile away, which was more indefensible and where they were effectively decimated. His leg was hit by a cannonball and had shattered, but he persevered until his leg was amputated that afternoon. Sickles leg and the cannonball are displayed at th .....