There’s a lot more to this ancient Buddha statue, which has been dated back to the 11th or 12th century, than meets the eye. It sounds like something out of Indiana Jones, but stuffed inside are the mummified remains of a monk, CT scans have revealed.
The hidden mummy was discovered last year by researchers from Drents Museum in the Netherlands. Now a new CT scan and endoscopy has shown that after the monks organs were removed for mummification, they were replaced by rolls of paper covered in Chinese writing.
The Buddhist monk is a master known as Liuquan from the Chinese Meditation School, and many monks actually consider these types of mummies to be “meditating” and not ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.
The Liuquan mummy will be on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in May this year.
