#LindowMan

[whencyclopedia]

A Gallery of 20 Mummies from around the World

Mummification is the natural or artificial preservation of the soft tissue of a dead body. Natural mummification can happen in extremely cold, dry, or anaerobic conditions. Perhaps the most famous example of a natural mummy preserved in ice is Ötzi, the Iceman. Dry, desert conditions are responsible for the Tarim mummies, for example, and lack of oxygen prevented bog bodies from decaying.

Intentional mummification is mostly associated with ancient Egyptian burial rites, but it was also common practice in the Andean cultures of South America, such as the Nazca civilization. Depending on the culture and the technique, the process can involve the removal of internal organs, dismemberment, heat treatment, the use of chemicals, and wrapping the body. The intentional preservation of some individuals extends into the modern age, with Lenin's embalmed body put on permanent display in Moscow.

In this gallery, we feature 20 images of preserved bodies from all around the world.

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[thesilicontribesman]

Lindow Man, The British Museum, London, 20.4.19.

[bogblogging]

Lindow Man

“Truly Lindow Man had died a triple death, through the stunning and lethal blows of the axe, the crushing force of the garrote that choked him and then broke his neck, and the cold embrace of the pool that symbolically drowned him in the final stage. The stab wound to his neck had already been revealed as a precise incision, intended to drain the body of blood, rather than a killing stroke, and we had also noted the significance of the figure three: there were three knots in the sinew cord used in the garroting, just as in the fist phrase there were three axe blows to his head.

Since each mode of death offered him in turn to a different god, and he probably died at the feast of the mighty Celtic sun god Belenos, the importance of his death went far beyond the initial impression of macabre overkill. Why this special death was visited upon him or why he offered himself for, as seemed possible, we did not yet know, but already we began to suspect that such an extraordinary death and offering to the gods would not be made on a routine basis, nor with any randomly chosen aristocrat: this special death required a very special person.”

- from The Life and Death of a Druid Prince by Anne Ross and Don Robins

Reconstructed face of Lindow Man, found in Cheshire, Northwest England in 1984. He was in his mid-twenties when he was apparently ritually sacrificed; he was bludgeoned, strangled, stabbed in the throat, and then deposited into a bog between 2 BC and 119 AD. He was muscular but not a soldier as he suffered no scars from wounds. He was hardy but had manicured nails - a sign of aristocracy. He consumed small amounts of a biscuit marked with a charcoal smudge immediately before he was killed. The practice of selecting an individual from a group using a bag of biscuits, one of them marked, has a long tradition in Northern Europe.

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Lindow Man

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