Friday, September 7, 2007
A mummy of an Inca girl, described as "perfect" by the archaeologists who found her in 1999, has gone on display for the first time in Argentina.
Hundreds of people crowded into a museum in the north-western city of Salta to see "la Doncella", the Maiden.
The remains of the girl, who was 15 when she died, were found in an icy pit on top of a volcano in the Andes, along with a younger boy and girl.
Researchers believe they were sacrificed by the Incas 500 years ago.
The three were discovered at a height of 6,700m (22,000ft) on Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano in north-west Argentina on the border with Chile.
At the time, the archaeologist leading the team, Dr Johan Reinhard, said they appeared "the best preserved of any mummy I've seen".
At the time, the archaeologist leading the team, Dr Johan Reinhard, said they appeared "the best preserved of any mummy I've seen".
It is believed the Children of Llullaillaco, as they have come to be known, were sacrificed during a ceremony thanking the Inca gods for the annual corn harvest.
'Great mistake'
The mummy of la Doncella is on display in a chamber that is filled with cold air that recreates the sub-freezing conditions in which she was found.
Visitors told Argentine media they were impressed at the mummy's state of conservation.
The mummy of la Doncella is on display in a chamber that is filled with cold air that recreates the sub-freezing conditions in which she was found.
Visitors told Argentine media they were impressed at the mummy's state of conservation.
"I'm amazed," one woman said. "You just expect her at any moment to get up and start talking."
But the exhibition has angered several indigenous groups who campaigned to stop the mummy from going on display.
Miguel Suarez from the Calchaquies valley tribes in and around Salta told the Associated Press news agency that the exhibit was "a great mistake", adding that he hoped visitors would show respect for the dead.
The Inca empire once stretched across much of western South America, including present-day Peru and Bolivia, and down to central Chile and parts of Argentina.
It collapsed in 1532 with the Spanish conquest.
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Why are some people objecting to the showing of this mummy? Does it really have anything to do with respect for the dead? If that was the case, wouldn't we have picketers protesting the numerous ancient Egyptian mummies shown - literally bare bones - in museums throughout the world - including in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo??? Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that we are uncomfortable staring death in the face when it's presented to us in the form of a well-preserved corpse of a 15 year old girl rather than the mummies one generally thinks of - brown, skeletal-looking remains with moldy bandages, sometimes with hanks of hair still attached to the skull. Why is it we can look at the mummy of the Great Pharaoh Rameses without a qualm, oohing and aahing about it's great antiquity, but we can't look at a 15 year old sacrificed to a rain god on a South American mountain 500 years ago? I don't get it. Is there no less desecration to Pharaoh?
5 comments:
Actually, it does. Some of us think that dead human bodies should not be put on display. It *is* disrespectful to the dead. I can understand the curiosity, but they should exhibit either photos or a replica of the body instead of the body itself. Human beings, even dead ones, do not deserve to be treated like objects.
She's wonderful.
It makes me want to travel to where she was found in the hope of finding another like her.
@Anonymous
"Some of us think that dead human bodies should not be put on display. It *is* disrespectful to the dead."
Disrespectful to the dead? What, you mean, like... being sacrificed and thrown in a pit is a way to honor someone? Give me a break. Putting her on display pales in comparison to being sacrificed and thrown away.
It is just guilt and shame, that adult human beings could treat children so cruelly.
I guess they don't want their dirty linen flapping in the breeze, showing their lack of civilization and their superstitions.
Ponto when this young girl was killed as a sacrifice that is what the people believed - that they were giving her to the gods. Our "civilizations" today still treat children and women cruelly, often under the guise of religious beliefs that nobody really believes anymore but "believers" pay lip service to because it serves their purposes and allows them to abuse children and women. So we, today, are the hypocrites and the truly cruel people, not the Incas who sacrificed people to the gods in whom they believed.
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