By Shawna Mount
Under dimmed lights, visitors wander in hushed tones barely audible over the eerie spell of music spreading through the room of exhibit boxes overlaying desiccated skin and ancient objects.
Thousands of years of mummification and history have been brought together into the Mummies of the World, the world’s largest collection of mummies and artifacts for a three-year United States tour.
“It is an absolutely amazing collection that we are lucky to have here in San Antonio,” Shannon Standley, director of communications and retail marketing, said. “This is the exhibit’s only stop in Texas.”
The exhibition currently resides in the Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway St., but only for a short time before moving to the tour’s next destination. The exhibit will be in San Antonio from Sept. 29 to Jan. 27.
“As of right now, they have not announced the next stop,” Standley said, adding that after San Antonio, the next destination will be the last stop on the tour.
Once the tour reaches its end, the collection will be returned to the loaning institutions and never be seen together again.
Collaborated from 21 institutions around the world, the exhibit includes 150 objects and specimens of real human and animal mummies along with related artifacts from South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Egypt.
“I was shocked when I first found out that people can be naturally mummified,” Standley said. “So the mummies still have their hair, fingernails and toe nails.”
Standley explains that natural mummifying can be caused by the body being packed in the earth or the weather conditions. When a corpse is mummified intentionally, several organs are removed from the body along with several other procedures used to help preserve the body.
The prized possession of this exhibit is the Detmold child, a well preserved Peruvian child mummy. The mummy radiocarbon dates between 4504 B.C. to 4457 B.C., which pre-dates King Tut by about 3,000 years, making this the oldest mummy on record.
“The Detmold child was only 10 to 12 months old when he died and his mummified body is around 6,020 years old,” Standley said. “The fact that the mummy pre-dates King Tut, tells you just how old this mummy is.”
The exhibition offers visitors multimedia and hands-on interactive stations as well as 3-D animation in order to give audiences the opportunity to learn how mummies are created along with where they come from and who they were.
“I advise that everyone should come and see it before it closes,” Standley said. “It is an amazing collection to see.”
The Witte Museum gives free access to the museum on Tuesday from 3 p.m.-8 p.m. Tickets to Mummies of the World are discounted on Free Tuesday during that time; adult tickets are $14.50 and children tickets are $13.50. On all other days, tickets for the exhibit are $25 for adults and $20.50 for children. Audio tours are $5 more than the ticket price. Military, senior and member discounts are available.
