An exhumed 2,500 year old mummified Siberian princess is set to be reburied because native groups in the Altai Mountains claim her posthumous anger is causing floods and earthquakes.

The tattooed corpse of the 25-year-old woman was preserved in permafrost until she was dug up more than two decades ago. It was this act, it is claimed, that has caused her anger.

Now the Council of Elders in Altai – representing native Siberians in the region – have pᴀssed a vote to rebury her remains, a decision apparently accepted by local governor Alexander Berdnikov.

The exhumed 2,500 mummified Siberian princess are set to be reburied because of claims her posthumous anger is causing floods and earthquakes

A specialist looks over the preserved remains of the Princess Ukok in her display case

 

A sculptor’s impression of what Princess Ukok would have originally looked like

Campaigners claimed that recent flooding in Altai – the worst in 50 years – and a series of earthquakes are the result of ancient anger at the grave being disturbed, The Siberian Times reported.

A ban has been imposed on further archeological digs in other burial mounds in the remote area where her remains were found.

Known as ‘Princess Ukok’ after the plateau where her burial chamber was found by Russian scientists, the discovery of her grave led to a leap in understanding of the Pazyryk people who lived before Christ in this remote mountainous region.

The mummy was excavated by Novosibirsk expert Natalia Polosmak in 1993 and was seen as ‘one of the most significant archeological discoveries at the close of the 20th century’.

A close-up image of tattoos on the shoulder of Princess Ukok; the image shows a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers

Buried around the body were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, possibly as a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman.

In the elaborate grave was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold. Some accounts, also suggest she was found with a small container of cannabis, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.

The princess had a tattoo of a mythological animal on her left shoulder, and another creature was depicted on her wrist

The Siberian princess was also adorned with several elaborate tattoos.

Tattoos on her left shoulder show a fantastical mythological animal: a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers which are decorated with the heads of griffons. The same griffon’s head is shown on the back of the animal.

The mouth of a spotted panther with a long tail is seen with the legs of a sheep.

She also has a deer’s head on her wrist, with big antlers. There is a drawing on the animal’s body on a thumb on her left hand.

Dr Polosmak said: ‘Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and the most beautiful.

‘More ancient tattoos have been found, like the Ice Man found in the Alps – but he only had lines, not the perfect and highly artistic images one can see on the bodies of the Pazyryks.

‘It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art. Incredible.’

The native people in Altai, though not genetically related to the ice princess, objected to her removal from her tomb which sat at an alтιтude of 8,200 feet in the Altai Mountains.

They were also against plans to display her in a specially built glᴀss sarcophagus in a museum in regional capital Gorno-Altaisk.

But local peoples from the Altai Republic, which borders Kazakhstan and Mongolia, say the presence of the mummy – also known as Ooch-Bala – in the burial chamber was ‘to bar the entrance to the kingdom of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ’.

Princess Ukok’s remains were found in the Ukok plateau in the Altai mountains in Siberia

The traditional clothes worn by men and women during the period Princess Ukok was alive

By removing the permafrost corpse the elders contend that ‘the entrance remains open’.

Campaigners in support of burial complained that ‘naked and defenseless, Ooch-Bala is freezing from inexplicable shame’.

A statement stressed: ‘Who puts the naked corpse of their mother on public display? She knocks into our heart, seeking compᴀssion. She is cold from evil indifference.’

Spokeswoman for the regional government Oksana Yeremeeva said: ‘The decision of Council of Elders is very respectable, but we cannot implement it immediately.’

Currently the mummy was seen as a museum possession and a new law would be needed to give the go-ahead to a reburial.

She said: ‘The mummy, though it can sound quite rude, is still a museum exhibit, that is we cannot just bury it, no-one has done such things before.’

The move is likely to require validation by the Russian Ministry of Culture in Moscow.

The scientists who found Princess Ukok also discovered that she had a shaved head and wore a big, along with an elaborate headdress.

Buried with her was a face brush made from horse hair, and a fragment of an ‘eyeliner pencil’.