o What: “Mummies of the World” (through Sept. 8).
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: Monday-Thursday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday- Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
o Cost: Adults (14 to 62), $21; seniors (63 and older) and students (14 and older with ID), $19; youth (3 to 13), $13. OMSI members (14 and older), $14; youth members (3 to 13) $10. Admission includes access to entire museum.
o What: "Mummies of the World" (through Sept. 8).
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: Monday-Thursday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday- Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
o Cost: Adults (14 to 62), $21; seniors (63 and older) and students (14 and older with ID), $19; youth (3 to 13), $13. OMSI members (14 and older), $14; youth members (3 to 13) $10. Admission includes access to entire museum.
o Information:OMSI.edu or 503-797-4000.
o "Mummy" comes from "mumiya," the Arabic word for a form of asphalt once thought to be used for mummification.
o Apothecaries would grind up pieces of mummies, because of their supposed enduring qualities, and sell the powder as a medicine.
o European artists used powdered mummies as pigment in a paint called mummy brown.
o Information: OMSI.edu or 503-797-4000.
o “Mummy” comes from “mumiya,” the Arabic word for a form of asphalt once thought to be used for mummification.
o Apothecaries would grind up pieces of mummies, because of their supposed enduring qualities, and sell the powder as a medicine.
o European artists used powdered mummies as pigment in a paint called mummy brown.
And Europe is well represented, including the remains of a 17th-century German baron, on loan from a descendent who now lives in the ancestral castle.
They all have something in common: not just with other mummies, but with us.
“These are all real people who had real lives,” said Marc Corwin, president of American Exhibitions, Inc.
It’s billed as the largest exhibition of mummies and related artifacts ever assembled. But its chief scientist prefers to focus on the intimate details of how people lived, and how they died, thousands of years ago.
“It’s exciting for me to know their occupations,” Heather Gill-Frerking, the exhibition’s director of science and education, said as she stood next to Nes-pa-qa-shuti’s display.
Hieroglyphs painted on his sarcophagus provided a biography. He wasn’t just a priest; he was a temple singer. X-rays taken in 1988 indicate he was between 30 and 40 years old when he died around 650 BC.
Gill-Frerking pointed out the image of a woman painted on the bottom of the sycamore mummy case: “She was the goddess of fertility.”
Other mummies that speak to Gill-Frerking, in an archaeological sense, include a 600-year-old Peruvian woman with intriguing tattoos on her face and chest and long black hair.
“Her hair is more beautiful than mine,” Gill-Frerking acknowledged.
A mummy’s hair is not just an interesting cosmetic artifact. Scientists who analyzed it could trace the Peruvians’ diet — seafood or a plant-based menu — as well as other ingested substances, like nicotine.
Baron von Holz was discovered in 1806 when members of the von Crailsheim family came across a crypt in the 14th-century castle in Sommersdorf.
Computer tomography (CT) scans revealed clues about the booted baron’s approximate age, dates of birth and death, and physical characteristics — including an extra vertebra.
Baroness Schenck von Geiern, another von Crailsheim ancestor who came along two or three generations after her traveling companion, also is part of the exhibit.
The remains were loaned to the exhibit by Manfred von Crailsheim.
While the family elders are on an extended road trip, Gill-Frerking noted that other international travelers are visiting their home. Manfred von Crailsheim uses part of the castle as a bed-and-breakfast.
Those bodies were the subject of a 2012 Associated Press story. It reported that 89 percent of the Vac mummies had at one point been infected with tuberculosis; around 35 percent had the disease when they died.
“Their immune system was likely better than ours,” Ildiko Pap, head of the Department of Anthropology of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, told the AP then. “If we could locate some gene sections and discover why they were more resistant to tuberculosis than us, then that could be of great assistance to modern medical science.”
Tom Vogt: 360-735-4558; http://twitter.com/col_history; tom.vogt@columbian.com.
