Mummies R Us

I was reading in the paper today about the climber from Maine who went missing in Canada twenty-one years ago.William Holland had been hiking on Snow Dome Mountain in the Canadian Rockies when he slipped and fell. His body was found this month by a pair of hikers. The body had been preserved in glacial ice and had a mummy like appearance when found.

This got me to thinking about Mummies and this amazing town in Mexico called Guanajuato. This city is famous for many things, among them a cemetery where every one in one hundred bodies become naturally mummified! This was proven thanks to a  late 1800’s law that required grave taxes be paid. Poor families that could not make the payments had to suffer their loved ones to be unearthed. It was discovered that many of them were mummified, and they are on display today in a museum there. Mummy souvenirs including little candied mummies are available for purchase. (MMMM! Sugar mummies!!!) Ray Bradbury wrote a book called Mummies of Guanajuato, and included the town and other villages in Mexico in several of his fictional short stories.

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