Guanajuato: Mummified

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Day 37 – Wednesday 26th October 2005

I wasn’t really in the mood for doing much, but one thing I wanted to see was the Museum of the Mummies. Mexicans have a strange fascination with death, and this museum only serves to intensify that fascination. The original mummies were discovered in 1865, when due to a lack of space in the local cemetary it beacme necessary to dig up some of the older skeletons. However when they were actually exhumed, the bodies hadn’t decomposed. Instead they had dried up completely and their flesh mummified. The bodies had been presevered in this way due to the mineral content and dryness of the soil in the area.

119 mummies are on display & although I don’t think pictures were allowed, I managed to sneak a few. The strange thing it all was the clothes they were wearing. It was possible to see the stitching on some of the clothes and it was perfect, meaning it had been made by machine. Thus the bodies were not all that old. In fact it only takes 5-6 years for a body to become mummified here, & unless the relatives keep paying for the plot in which a body is buried, it will be dug up.

Seeing all that flesh had given me an appetite, so I made my way to the market and bought a set lunch of breaded chicken, rice and beans with a coke for $35 Pesos. Eating so much made me even more lethargic than I had previously so I whiled away the afternoon by reading in the park.

By early evening I was at a loose end. I used the time to drink my two free beers with a couple of gap year travellers who were flying off to Australia in the next few days.