8 Facts about Mummies

When people think of mummies, they often think of ancient Egypt, perhaps because of rich grave goods buried with Egyptian mummies, and the wealth of information left in hieroglyphs. But mummification has been practised all across the globe for many thousands of years.

But where does the name come from? Mummy comes from the Latin word mumia borrowed from the Arabic mumiya. This refers to the bitumen used to help preserve the bodies of Egyptian mummies. The Egyptians collected this naturally-occuring substance from the nearby Dead Sea.

By 30 BCE, Egypt was under the control of the Roman Empire - but mummification carried on! Rather than elaborate gold masks, the faces of the dead were painted onto boards placed over the mummies. Known as Fayum portraits, these are very rare artworks and highly treasured.

Mummies were also made by the south American Aymara and Inca cultures, but, unlike the Egyptians, they used the low oxygen, high winds, and cold temperatures of the Andes mountains to make their mummies. And many of these mummies also seem to have been victims of sacrifice.

Mummies have fascinated people since ancient times. But in the 19th Century, mummies started to become a form of mass entertainment. Mummies were toured in travelling exhibits and unwrapped in public displays - with little or no care taken for their preservation.

For centuries, the town of Venzone in the Friuli region of Italy has intrigued the world. A collection of over 40 medieval bodies placed in the church's crypt seemed to naturally mummify. The explanations given range from miracles to fungus, but no-one is exactly sure.

In the 1950s, Jack Birns visited Venezone for LIFE magazine, documenting the townspeople carrying the bodies outside the church and dressing them, as if they were still alive. Unfortunately in 1976 an earthquake hit the town and destroyed many of these unusual mummies.