o What: “Mummies of the World” (through Sept. 8).
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: Monday-Thursday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday- Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
o Cost: Adults (14 to 62), $21; seniors (63 and older) and students (14 and older with ID), $19; youth (3 to 13), $13. OMSI members (14 and older), $14; youth members (3 to 13) $10. Admission includes access to entire museum.
o What: "Mummies of the World" (through Sept. 8).
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: Monday-Thursday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday- Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
o Cost: Adults (14 to 62), $21; seniors (63 and older) and students (14 and older with ID), $19; youth (3 to 13), $13. OMSI members (14 and older), $14; youth members (3 to 13) $10. Admission includes access to entire museum.
o Information:OMSI.edu or 503-797-4000.
o "Mummy" comes from "mumiya," the Arabic word for a form of asphalt once thought to be used for mummification.
o Apothecaries would grind up pieces of mummies, because of their supposed enduring qualities, and sell the powder as a medicine.
o European artists used powdered mummies as pigment in a paint called mummy brown.
o Information: OMSI.edu or 503-797-4000.
o “Mummy” comes from “mumiya,” the Arabic word for a form of asphalt once thought to be used for mummification.
o Apothecaries would grind up pieces of mummies, because of their supposed enduring qualities, and sell the powder as a medicine.
o European artists used powdered mummies as pigment in a paint called mummy brown.
And Europe is well represented, including the remains of a 17th-century German baron, on loan from a descendent who now lives in the ancestral castle.
They all have something in common: not just with other mummies, but with us.
“These are all real people who had real lives,” said Marc Corwin, president of American Exhibitions, Inc.
It’s billed as the largest exhibition of mummies and related artifacts ever assembled. But its chief scientist prefers to focus on the intimate details of how people lived, and how they died, thousands of years ago.
“It’s exciting for me to know their occupations,” Heather Gill-Frerking, the exhibition’s director of science and education, said as she stood next to Nes-pa-qa-shuti’s display.
Another notable part of the exhibition is a German nobleman, Baron von Holz.
“He was a mercenary during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s,” Gill-Frerking said. Buried wearing new knee-high leather boots, “He was just an interesting guy.”
The displays illustrate the different aspects of mummification. The Egyptians did it intentionally, removing the internal organs and preserving the body with salts and resins and other chemicals to prevent decomposition.
Natural mummification has occurred when people died in bogs or deserts, or when their bodies were put where conditions preserved the remains, including caves or burial crypts.
Looking forward, too
Learning more about past cultures is a big part of mummy research, but it’s not all rear-view-mirror science. Another European family at OMSI represents a group of mummies that might influence health care.
Three members of the Orlovits family are among 265 mummies laid to rest in a long-forgotten church crypt in Vac, Hungary, between 1731 and 1838. The crypt was discovered in 1994 during the church’s renovation.
Michael and Veronica Orlovits and their son, Johannes, are displayed wearing replicas of the clothes they were entombed in. Michael, who was born in 1765 and died in 1806, worked as a miller.
The bodies in the crypt were preserved by the cool dry air and oil from the pine boards used to build their coffins, according to exhibit information.
Those bodies were the subject of a 2012 Associated Press story. It reported that 89 percent of the Vac mummies had at one point been infected with tuberculosis; around 35 percent had the disease when they died.
“Their immune system was likely better than ours,” Ildiko Pap, head of the Department of Anthropology of the Hungarian Natural History Museum, told the AP then. “If we could locate some gene sections and discover why they were more resistant to tuberculosis than us, then that could be of great assistance to modern medical science.”
Tom Vogt: 360-735-4558; http://twitter.com/col_history; tom.vogt@columbian.com.
