What happens if you hold a mummy in a museum. Mummies of Guanajuato: the sad story of the cholera epidemic in Mexico

The Folk Museum of Guanajuato is located in one of the most beautiful places in the historical part of the city. The museum was opened in 1979 and since then its collection has been constantly replenished with new examples of folk art.

The permanent exhibition of the museum presents many objects of national heritage. These include archaeological finds, examples of fine art, tools, and household items of local peoples. The pearl of the museum is its extensive collection of miniatures.

Despite the abundance of exhibits, the museum's exhibition is organized very compactly, which makes visiting the museum very comfortable.

The museum is open every day, except Sunday and Monday, from ten o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening. On Sunday the museum is open to the public from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon.

Jean Byron House Museum

This museum is a recreation of a hacienda, a typical building where wealthy residents lived during the booming silver mining industry. The hacienda was restored in the mid-50s of the last century and in our time is a good visual example of the lifestyle of its last inhabitants - the artist Jean Byron and her husband Virgil.

The creative inclinations of the residents of the house left a colorful imprint on its decoration. It is furnished with subtle taste. The interior is decorated with original objects made of wood and ceramics, paintings, as well as antique furniture. The beautiful garden surrounding the house-museum also delights with its tranquil beauty.

The house functions as a museum, which regularly hosts exhibitions. There is also a cultural center where Baroque music concerts and a variety of arts and crafts activities are held. Some art products can be purchased.

Museum of Independence

The Independence Museum is located in the city center inside a building built at the end of the eighteenth century by philanthropist Francisco Miguel Gonzalez.

It was previously home to a prison that, on one historic Sunday in September 1810, lost all its prisoners as a result of the Grito de Independencia.

In 1985, the building acquired the status of a museum, which currently includes seven permanent exhibitions, including “The Liberation of Prisoners”, “Abolition of Slavery”, “Judicial Hidalgo”, “The Perfection of Independence” and others. In addition to exhibitions, the museum organizes excursions, thematic film series, traveling exhibitions, conferences and concerts.

San Ramon Mining Museum

The San Ramon Mining Museum is a public museum dedicated to the region's mining industry and is open to the public. The permanent exhibition includes exhibitions of minerals, ancient photographs, objects of labor and everyday life of miners in Valencia County.

The oldest exhibits in the museum date back to 1549, when surface deposits of silver were discovered in the county of Valencia, considered to this day one of the richest in the world. Later, mining began to be done using the shaft method. A separate exhibition is set up in one of these mines. The total length of this mine is five hundred and fifty meters, however, for safety reasons, only the first fifty are allowed to be visited.

At the entrance to the excursion mine there is a small restaurant where you can try national cuisine in an appropriate setting.

Mummy Museum

The Museum of Mummies in the Mexican town of Guanajuato invites its visitors to look at the mummified bodies of people, of which more than a hundred are collected here. The museum's exhibition is evidence of a very unusual attitude towards death. The preservation of the mummies on display is very good. Mexican mummies differ from Egyptian ones in that the atmosphere and soils in Mexico are too dry, so the bodies are severely dehydrated and not specially embalmed.

The museum exhibits 59 mummies that were exhumed between 1865 and 1958. At that time, there was a law in the country according to which relatives had to pay a tax in order for the bodies of their deceased loved ones to rest in the cemetery. And if the family could not pay on time, they lost the right to the burial site, and the bodies were removed from the stone tombs. After lying in dry soil, some bodies naturally mummified and were kept in a special building at the cemetery.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mummies located there began to attract the attention of tourists, and cemetery employees began charging fees for inspection. In 1969, when the mummies in Guanajuato were displayed in glass cases. And in 2007, the museum’s exhibition was rearranged into thematic sections. Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists come here, as well as numerous researchers.

Exhacienda San Gabriel de Barrera Museum

The Exhacienda San Gabriel de Barrera Museum is a museum of Mexican gardens. Here you can see Mexican flowers, shrubs and trees. The Exhacienda San Gabriel de Barrera Museum is located on a huge Mexican ranch created in the seventeenth century. Previously it belonged to the famous Mexican Gabriel Barrera. He gained popularity as a gardener thanks to the cultivation of various plants. These were Mexican flowers, shrubs and trees. Seventeen Barrera gardens have survived to this day.

Visitors to the gardens will be able to see here not only representatives of plants that were grown in the seventeenth century, but also those that are found in Mexico today.

Five gardens are located in the museum in an open area, and there are also those located indoors. Exhacienda San Gabriel de Barrera is open every day. Visitors are welcome from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. You will have to pay about eight dollars for a day at the museum.

Diego Rivera Museum

The Diego Rivera Museum was founded in 1975. It contains the collection of the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The gallery's collection includes over one hundred and seventy-five works by the master. Most of the paintings once belonged to local resident Marta. At the Diego Rivera Museum, visitors will be able to see paintings that the artist created in early childhood, during his youth and in the last years of his life. The last painting he created dates back to 1956. In the museum you can see such famous paintings by Diego Rivera as “Madame Libet”, “Dove of Peace”, “Classic Head”.

In addition to paintings, the gallery also presents some of the artist’s sketches. The Diego Rivera Museum houses works by other twentieth-century Mexican artists. They are combined into a separate collection called “minimark”. For example, here you can see paintings by José Luis Cuevas. The Diego Rivera Museum is open at any time of the year. You will have to pay a few dollars to stay in the museum.

Casa de la Tia Aura Museum

This museum can literally be called unique. Because its exhibition is a very unique collection of impressions, shades, nuances and inexplicable feelings left over from the inhabitants who inhabited this old house before.

This museum is often called the Haunted House. And the special effects help to very reliably experience its mysterious and even mystical setting.

The idea for creating such a museum was given by information that human sacrifices were performed inside this house.

The tour of the house is conducted only in Spanish, so foreign-speaking guests may not easily understand the guide's story. But very believable sighs, rustles and other sounds speak for themselves. You definitely won’t be bored in this museum.

The museum is open from Monday to Saturday.

Museum of Fine Arts in Quixote

The Quixote Museum of Fine Arts is a museum created under the patronage of the Government of Guanajuato and the Cervantina Eulalio Foundation. The Quixote Museum of Fine Arts is widely known as a cultural center. The reason for its fame lies not only in the museum’s wide thematic collection (more than 900 works of art). First of all, the museum is known as the center of the annual Arts Festival, where artists, writers, sculptors and other representatives of the creative intelligentsia from all over the world gather.

The museum's exhibition includes paintings made in different styles and techniques, sculptures, ceramics, objects of decorative and applied art and much more. The collection continues to grow, mainly through donations from the Cervantina Foundation.

Mummy Museum

The Mummy Museum was created at the end of the nineteenth century. It was opened in 1865. At this time, the first mummified body was discovered in the pantheon of Santa Paulo. Over the one hundred and fifty year history of its existence, the museum has been visited by over one million visitors. The museum's mummy collection includes more than one hundred exhibits. Some of them were donated to the museum by American researchers.

The Mummy Museum was created to preserve Mexico's cultural heritage. Each exhibit reflects life in Guanajuato over several decades. During excursions around the Mummy Museum, the guide tells visitors about the features of the appearance of mummifications, the decoration of their graves, and also recounts Mexican legends associated with mummies. Each museum employee took part in archaeological excavations that are constantly carried out in Guanajuato. In 2007, the mummy museum was reconstructed.

Sights of Guanajuato

But in real life they do not pose any danger, but are a most valuable archaeological object that can tell about the life and traditions of ancient people. If you are not afraid of meeting a mummy, then you should definitely visit the Guanajuato Museum in Mexico, which has collected more than fifty mummies under one roof.

One of the most shocking museums is located in Mexico, in the city of Guanajuato. You will never see living creatures there, because the main and only exhibits are mummies. Before we begin the story, let’s figure out who mummies are. A mummy is the body of a living creature, treated with a special chemical composition that slows down the decomposition process.

The history of the creation of the museum of mummies

How did the idea of creating such a strange museum come about? Let's turn to history. It all started in the 19th century, when the city authorities introduced a burial tax. From now on, in order to be buried in the cemetery, the population had to pay a fee. Of course, the deceased could not pay for themselves; this responsibility was automatically transferred to the relatives of the deceased. But, as a rule, the payment was either simply not received, or the deceased had no relatives. The bodies were then exhumed. Imagine the surprise of gravediggers when they dig up not just a bunch of bare bones, but entire bodies, practically in perfect condition. Mysticism? Not at all. It's all about the special structure and unusual composition of the soil, which created natural conditions for mummification.

The law was in effect for almost a hundred years. But this was quite enough to collect a rich fund for the future museum. The mummies were kept in a building next to the cemetery. Time passed, and this collection began to attract more and more tourists, who were even willing to pay to “admire” the terrible exhibits. This is how the Guanajuato Mummies Museum came into being.

Museum structure

In total, the museum has 111 mummies, but only 59 are on public display. But even this number is enough to scare some tourists. The museum begins with a small corridor lined on both sides with the most ordinary and unremarkable mummies. The most interesting thing is that each of them has preserved skin. Not as tender as a person’s, but the creature died long ago, he can be forgiven. Some of the deceased are displayed in the clothes they were buried in. But then the exhibits become much more interesting. In the past, these were people of different classes. For example, there is a mummy in a leather jacket. Surprising, considering that a person lived in the 19th century, when there was no rock and motorcycles. In another room you can meet the mummy in full regalia: dress, jewelry. There is even a mummy with a waist-length scythe. These are the exhibits.

But most horrifying is the tradition of taking souvenir photos with dead children. The museum even displays photographs that will make your hair stand on end. In the next room you can see the mummy of a pregnant woman and her child - the smallest mummy in the world. No one will be indifferent to the room with mummies who did not die a natural death. There you can meet drowned people, a woman who fell into a lethargic sleep, and a man who died from a cranial injury. Each pose makes it clear who died and how. Some of them even had their shoes on. These are entire works of art from the ancient shoe industry.

And in conclusion

Many would consider Mexicans to be a savage people who take death lightly. What causes horror and disgust in us is commonplace among them. Mexicans prefer to be friends with death. This is what our distant ancestors bequeathed. They even have a national holiday - “Day of the Dead”. For residents of Mexico, death is the most common occurrence. Maybe we should also take a simpler approach to life?

A mummy is the body of a living creature specially treated with a chemical substance, in which the process of tissue decomposition is slowed down. Mummies are stored for hundreds and even thousands of years, carrying the history of our ancestors, their customs and appearance. On the one hand, mummies look terribly scary, sometimes you get goosebumps just by looking at them, on the other hand, they contain the most interesting history of the ancient world. We have compiled a list of the 13 most creepy and at the same time most interesting mummies ever discovered in the world:

13. Guanajuato Mummies Museum, Mexico

Photo 13. Guanajuato Mummies Museum - the exhibition displays 59 mummies that died in the years 1850-1950 [blogspot.ru]

The Guanajuato Mummies Museum in Mexico is one of the strangest and most gruesome in the world, housing some 111 mummies (59 of which are on display) that died between 1850 and 1950. Distorted facial expressions on some mummies indicate they were buried alive. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the museum every year.

12. Baby mummy in Qilakitsoq, Greenland

Photo 12. Mummy of a 6-month-old boy in Greenland (the town of Qilakitsoq) [Choffa]

Another example of a living burial - the photo shows a 6-month-old boy found in Greenland. Three more mummies of women were found nearby, perhaps one of them was the boy’s mother, with whom he was buried alive (according to Eskimo customs of that time). The mummies date back to 1460. Thanks to the icy climate of Greenland, clothing from that time was well preserved. A total of 78 pieces of clothing made from animal skins, such as seals and deer, were found. The adults had small tattoos on their faces, but the child's face was simply terrifying!

11. Rosalia Lombardo, Italy

Photo 11. 2-year-old girl who died in 1920 from pneumonia [Maria lo sposo]

Little Rosalia was only 2 years old when she died of pneumonia in 1920 in Palermo (Sicily). The saddened father commissioned the famous embalmer Alfred Salafia to mummify the body of Rosalia Lombardo.

10. Mummy with painted face, Egypt

Photo 10. A mummy from Egypt is presented in the British Museum [Klafubra]

When we think about mummies, the first thing that comes to mind is Egypt. Many films have been made featuring these preserved corpses, which, wrapped in bandages, come back to life to attack civilians. The photo shows one of the typical representatives of mummies (the exhibit is on display at the British Museum).

9. Christian Friedrich von Kalbutz, Germany

Photo 9. Knight Christian, Germany [B. Schroeren]

The photo shows the German knight Christian; an aura of mystery surrounds this scary look of the mummy.

8. Ramses II, Egypt

Photo 8. Mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh - Ramses the Great [ThutmoseIII]

The mummy shown in the photo belongs to Pharaoh Ramses II (Ramses the Great), who died in 1213 BC. and is one of the most famous Egyptian pharaohs. He is believed to have been the ruler of Egypt during the campaign of Moses and is represented as such in many works of fiction. One of the distinctive features of the mummy is the presence of red hair, symbolizing the connection with the god Set, the patron of royal power.

7. Woman of Skrydstrup, Denmark

Photo 7. Mummy of a girl 18-19 years old, Denmark [Sven Rosborn]

Mummy of a woman, 18-19 years old, buried in Denmark in 1300 BC. Her clothing and jewelry suggest that she belonged to the chief's family. The girl was buried in an oak coffin, so her body and clothes were surprisingly well preserved.

6. Ginger, Egypt

Photo 6. Mummy of an Egyptian adult [Jack1956]

The Ginger “Ginger” mummy is an Egyptian mummy of an adult male who died over 5,000 years ago and was buried in sand in the desert (at that time the Egyptians had not yet begun mummifying corpses).

5. Gullah Man, Ireland

Photo 5. Gallagh Man Buried in a Swamp [Mark J Healey]

This strange looking mummy, known as Gallagh Man, was discovered in a bog in Ireland in 1821. A man was buried in a swamp wearing a cloak with a fragment of a willow branch around his neck. Some researchers believe he may have been strangled.

4. Man Rendswüren, Germany

Photo 4. Man bog Rendsvächter [Bullenwächter]

The Rendswühren bog man, like the bog man Gallach, was found in a bog, this time in Germany in 1871. The man was 40-50 years old, it is believed that he was beaten to death, the body was found in the 19th century.

3. Seti I – pharaoh of ancient Egypt

Photo 3. Seti I – Egyptian pharaoh in the tomb. [Underwood and Underwood]

Seti I ruled 1290-1279 BC. The pharaoh's mummy was buried in an Egyptian tomb. The Egyptians were skilled embalmers, which is why we can see them at work in modern times.

2. Princess Ukok, Altai

Photo 2. Mummy of Princess Ukok [

: 21°01′11″ n. w. 101°15′58″ W. d. / 21.0199278° s. w. 101.2663833° W. d. / 21.0199278; -101.2663833(G) (I) K:Museums founded in 1969

History and exhibition of the museum

The museum houses 111 mummies (59 mummies are on display) exhumed between 1865 and 1958, when a law was in force requiring relatives to pay a tax to have the bodies of their loved ones in the cemetery. If the tax was not paid on time, the relatives lost the right to the burial site, and the dead bodies were removed from the stone tombs. As it turned out, some of them were naturally mummified, and they were kept in a special building at the cemetery.

The oldest burials dated from 1833, when there was a cholera epidemic in the city. According to other sources, the mummies on display in the museum belong to people who died in the years 1850-1950.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, these mummies began to attract tourists, and cemetery workers began to charge a fee for visiting the premises where they were kept. The official date of establishment of the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato is 1969, when mummies were exhibited in glass shelves.

In 2007, the museum's exhibition was redistributed according to various topics. According to the official website, the museum is visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Since the same 2007, 22 mummies have been studied by specialists from the University of Texas at San Marcos ( Texas State University, San Marcos) .

Beginning in 2009, a series of exhibitions were organized in the United States, which featured 36 mummies from the museum. The first of these exhibitions opened in October 2009 in Detroit.

Gallery

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Ticket office and entrance to the museum store

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Souvenir shop next to the mummies museum

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One of the dressed mummies

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Fragment of the hand of one of the mummies

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Reclining mummy of a child

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Mummies from the museum exhibition

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Notes

Excerpt characterizing the Museum of Mummies (Guanajuato)

- Well done, guys! - said Prince Bagration.
“For the sake of... wow wow wow wow!...” was heard through the ranks. The gloomy soldier walking on the left, shouting, looked back at Bagration with such an expression as if he was saying: “we know it ourselves”; the other, without looking back and as if afraid to have fun, with his mouth open, shouted and walked by.
They were ordered to stop and take off their backpacks.
Bagration rode around the ranks passing by and dismounted from his horse. He gave the Cossack the reins, took off and gave his cloak, straightened his legs and adjusted the cap on his head. The head of the French column, with officers in front, appeared from under the mountain.
"With God!" Bagration said in a firm, audible voice, turned for a moment to the front and, slightly waving his arms, with the awkward step of a cavalryman, as if working, he walked forward along the uneven field. Prince Andrei felt that some irresistible force was pulling him forward, and he experienced great happiness. [Here occurred the attack about which Thiers says: “Les russes se conduisirent vaillamment, et chose rare a la guerre, on vit deux masses d"infanterie Mariecher resolument l"une contre l"autre sans qu"aucune des deux ceda avant d "etre abordee"; and Napoleon on the island of St. Helena said: "Quelques bataillons russes montrerent de l"intrepidite." [The Russians behaved valiantly, and a rare thing in war, two masses of infantry marched decisively against each other, and neither of the two yielded until the clash." Napoleon's words: [Several Russian battalions showed fearlessness.]
The French were already getting close; Already Prince Andrei, walking next to Bagration, clearly distinguished the baldrics, red epaulettes, even the faces of the French. (He clearly saw one old French officer, who, with twisted legs in boots, was hardly walking up the hill.) Prince Bagration did not give a new order and still walked silently in front of the ranks. Suddenly, one shot cracked between the French, another, a third... and smoke spread through all the disorganized enemy ranks and gunfire crackled. Several of our men fell, including the round-faced officer, who was walking so cheerfully and diligently. But at the same instant the first shot rang out, Bagration looked back and shouted: “Hurray!”
“Hurray aa aa!” a drawn-out scream echoed along our line and, overtaking Prince Bagration and each other, our people ran down the mountain in a discordant, but cheerful and animated crowd after the upset French.

The attack of the 6th Jaeger ensured the retreat of the right flank. In the center, the action of the forgotten battery of Tushin, who managed to light Shengraben, stopped the movement of the French. The French put out the fire, carried by the wind, and gave time to retreat. The retreat of the center through the ravine was hasty and noisy; however, the troops, retreating, did not mix up their commands. But the left flank, which was simultaneously attacked and bypassed by the superior forces of the French under the command of Lannes and which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and Pavlograd hussar regiments, was upset. Bagration sent Zherkov to the general of the left flank with orders to immediately retreat.
Zherkov smartly, without removing his hand from his cap, touched his horse and galloped off. But as soon as he drove away from Bagration, his strength failed him. An insurmountable fear came over him, and he could not go where it was dangerous.
Having approached the troops of the left flank, he did not go forward, where there was shooting, but began to look for the general and commanders where they could not be, and therefore did not convey the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the regimental commander of the very regiment that was represented at Braunau by Kutuzov and in which Dolokhov served as a soldier. The command of the extreme left flank was assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment, where Rostov served, as a result of which a misunderstanding occurred. Both commanders were very irritated against each other, and while things had been going on on the right flank for a long time and the French had already begun their offensive, both commanders were busy in negotiations, which were intended to insult each other. The regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were very little prepared for the upcoming task. The people of the regiments, from soldier to general, did not expect battle and calmly went about peaceful affairs: feeding horses in the cavalry, collecting firewood in the infantry.

Perhaps everyone has seen some horror film at least once in their life in which the living dead attack people. These evil dead excite the human imagination. But in fact, mummies pose no danger, and have incredible scientific value. In our review, one of the most incredible archaeological finds of our time - the mummies of Guanajuato.

The Guanajuato Mummies are a collection of naturally mummified bodies buried during a cholera outbreak in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1833. These mummies were discovered in the city cemetery, after which Guanajuato became one of the main tourist attractions in Mexico. True, the attraction is very creepy.

Scientists believe the bodies were exhumed between 1865 and 1958. At that time, a new tax was introduced, according to which the relatives of the deceased had to pay a tax on a place in the cemetery, otherwise the body would be exhumed. In the end, ninety percent of the remains were exhumed because there were few people willing to pay such a tax. Of these, only two percent of the bodies were naturally mummified. The mummified bodies, which were kept in a special building in the cemetery, became available to tourists in the 1900s.

Cemetery workers began allowing visitors, for a few pesos, to enter the building where the bones and mummies were kept. The site was later turned into a museum called El Museo De Las Momias ("Museum of the Mummies"). A law banning forced exhumation was passed in 1958, but the museum still displays the original mummies.

The mummies of the Mexican city of Guanajuato are the result of weather and soil conditions under which mummification occurs. The bodies of deceased people who were not taken for burial by relatives often became public exhibits. During the epidemic, bodies were buried immediately after death to prevent the spread of the disease. Scientists believe that some people were buried while still alive, and that is why the expression of horror was imprinted on their faces. But there is another opinion: facial expression is the result of post-mortem processes.

Moreover, it is known that a certain Ignace Aguilar was indeed buried alive. The woman suffered from a strange illness that caused her heart to stop several times. During one of the attacks, her heart seemed to stop for more than a day. Believing that Ignacia had died, her relatives buried her. When they exhumed it, it turned out that her body was lying face down, and the woman was biting her hand, and there was baked blood in her mouth.

The museum, which houses at least 111 mummies, is located directly above where the mummies were first discovered. This museum also houses the smallest mummy in the world - the fetus of a pregnant woman who became a victim of cholera. Some of the mummies are displayed wearing the preserved clothing in which they were buried. The mummies of Guanajuato are a prominent part of Mexican folk culture, highlighting the national holiday "Day of the Dead" (El Dia de los Muertos).

No less interesting. Scientists still cannot unravel the recipe by which Pirogov’s body was mummified, and people come to church to venerate him as if they were holy relics and ask for help.