A Night At The Museum

This past Saturday night was "Free Night at the Museums," and as a confirmed cheapskate I decided to take full advantage.  I started at the Denver Museum of Nature of Science, which I have not visited in many years. They are currently having an exhibit on Cuba, which is where I started the evening.  It was mostly made up of large photographs of various Cuban people from various walks of life, expressing their feeling about life on the island, along with exhibits of various items the island is known for (cigars, bongos, and even a '57 Chevy).  It did not take long to walk through it, and was not that enlightening, although I did learn that Cuba has crocodiles, and that they are the most endangered crocodiles on the planet.  There is also an Imax  movie that complements the exhibit, and would probably have made the whole thing much more interesting, but it was not being shown that night.  Bummer.

My next stop was the Egyptian Mummy Exhibit, which was not there the last time I was at the museum and was pretty damn interesting.  Evidently up until 1946 you could actually buy a mummy as a souvenir in Egypt and have it shipped home, which is exactly what Pueblo, Colorado entrepreneur Andrew McClelland did back in 1905. These mummies eventually wound up at the Rosemount Museum in Pueblo, and are now on permanent loan to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  The mummy in the photograph on the right was buried 2,900 years ago, by the way, and interestingly enough, the sarcophagus she was buried in is 600 years older than that.  In other words, it was a used sarcophagus.

Studies show that the mummification process was done on the cheap in the case of this woman, and she was only lightly wrapped.  That and the fact that it was a used sarcophagus point to her being a middle class person, and not royalty.  The other mummy in the collection is also of a woman, but she remains tightly wrapped.  I guess one of the downfalls of being part of the ancient Egyptian middle class is that if your tomb is discovered, you might be put on display for all to see thousands of years later.  This was once a real, live person that is on display.  I wonder at what point a body goes from being a dead person to an artifact? Putting them on display somehow doesn't seem right, but what do I know?  What I do know is that I definitely plan on being cremated.  Let them put that on display in 3,000 years.