Sixty mummies to keep the millenary “iceman” company, in an exhibition

Oetzi, the largest natural mummy known in Europe, will be the protagonist of the exhibition “Mummies. Dream of an eternal life”, presented this Tuesday in the Italian region of Alto Adige and which, from March 10 to October 25, 2009, will occupy the museum in the town of Bolzano in which this mummy of ice has been preserved at low temperature since 1998. But it will not be the only one, since more than sixty mummies will keep company to the millenary “iceman”.

It is Oetzi’s need – more than 5,000 years old – to remain cold that has led the promoters of the exhibition, the German museum group Reiss-Engelhorn, to move such a large group of mummies to the Alps.
Sixty mummies to keep the millenary “iceman” company, in an exhibition

According to the organizers, the presence of the “iceman” makes the exhibition, the largest of its kind ever held, “unique, since Oetzi cannot be taken or exhibited beyond the refrigerated cell of the museum” in Bolzano.

The mummies in the exhibition will be exhibited in their cultural context, accompanied by multimedia installations that will tell the results of scientific research on this technique of preserving corpses. In addition to the mummies, archaeological remains and ritual objects belonging to different civilizations that have walked the Earth and different natural environments, from the time of the pharaohs in Egypt to the present day, will be exhibited.

The “iceman” was found in a place known today as Val Senales, an alpine pᴀss on the Italian-Austrian border at an alтιтude of 3,200 meters and close to the Similaun glacier, in the Otzal mᴀssif, from which the nickname of the mummy comes.

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