Mummies from Around the World

But even time proved powerless: the mummies survived their own death.

Archaeologist and anthropologist Жюльет Каз sets off on a round-the-world research expedition to understand how and why methods of mummification changed—and why they arose in the first place, from Egyptian sarcophagi to tiny Amazonian censtsa heads, from Japanese monks who consciously prepared themselves for preservation after death to discoveries from the eternal frost. How did people of different eras try to stop decay? For what reason do mummified bodies end up in museum display cases? What moral and ethical questions do the remains that reached us through the centuries raise?

This book is not only about technologies for preserving the body. It is a story about memory and fear, about superstition and faith, about the delicate thread between the past and the present—and about those who, after death, did not dissolve into oblivion.