Ancients Week: Mummies







Did you know that (from Roadside America) there is a mummified toe cocktail?

Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, the ending point of many of the stampeders in the late 1800s, early 1900s, is an interesting town. It looks basically the way it did 100 years ago. However, the biggest attraction is a $5 drink served at the Downtown Hotel, with a human toe dating back to the time of Prohibition, called the Sour Toe Cocktail. Two brothers were traveling back and forth from Dawson City to smuggle rum into Alaska. One night, their toes got frostbite and fell off.

In 1973, a man bought their cabin and found a toe in a masonry jar, which is now in this popular drink. There is apparently a heavy fine if you swallow the toe while drinking the cocktail.

Did you know you can have a mummified toe (above)?


Did you know a mummy was found in the AZ desert?

About 1895, two wandering cowboys riding through the Gila Bend Desert of Central Arizona came upon the nude body of a man half-buried in the treacherous shifting sands. The body was exhumed and carried to a near-by town for possible identification. It has since remained unidentified.

The body is a man about 45 years of age, 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs at present 137 pounds. He weighed about 225 pound originally. Death came through a gunshot wound in the stomach and accompany stains are plainly visible to this day. Scientists have said that this is a perfect example of natural dehydration, claiming that the action of the hot sands and possible chemicals contained therein together with the dry air, produced this condition within 24 hours after death. This prevented any form of decomposition.

Hair, mustache, eye-lashes, teeth, and nails--in fact every detail of the entire body is perfect. "Sylvester" may be seen at the World Famous Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Colman Ferry Dock, Seattle Washington, U.S.A.

Did you know that early Egyptians had prosthetics already?

When this mummy lived, she was able to walk like an Egyptian—thanks to a false toe.

The toe, made of wood and leather, may be the world's earliest known functional prosthetic, experts say.

The current earliest known prosthesis is an artificial leg found in Italy that dates back to 300 B.C. That's several hundred years younger than the Egyptian toe, which dates to between 1000 and 600 B.C.

A woman between 50 and 60 used the well-worn prosthetic, and the amputation site of her toe seems to have healed successfully, Jacky Finch, of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

To see if the toe really works, Finch is gathering a group of volunteers who have lost their right big toes to wear a replica of the Egyptian toe.

Finch will also test a second Egyptian prosthetic toe from the same time period. That toe, made of a sort of papier mache, is on display at the British Museum.

Replicas from both toes will be tested at the Human Performance Laboratory at the nearby University of Salford.

"If we can prove that one or both were functional," Finch said, "then we will have pushed back prosthetic medicine by as much as 700 years."


Talk about creepy mummies - this 6-month-old is believed to have been left alive atop his mother's mummified body. It was thought he might have had Down syndrome and was placed in with his mother into an icy grave.  There were several bodies found together and the adults had tattoos. It's believed they were from around 1460.

Mummies have been found created accidentally, in the desert, caves, icy places, and bogs.


Sethos is one of the purposely made mummies of Egypt from the 14th Century. Organs were removed and put in separate jars. The body was treated with salts and then saggy parts were reinforced with linen. It was wrapped then in cloths.


The Peruvian mummies were sat up and facing the rising sun. They were preserved in the extremely arid climate and the resin they applied to the skin.

Many indigenous people around the globe preserved their special dead with mummification. Perhaps that very bizarre practice gave birth to movies like this -




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