High in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, where Shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt in the air.
Local officials, urged on by the increasingly militant electorate, are collecting signatures, writing petitions and demanding audiences with regional political leaders.
Their demands are simple and have nothing to do with the inept rule, poverty, corruption and ecological disasters dogging the region.
They want a 2,500-year-old mummy, found by Russian archaeologists 11 years ago and being studied in the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk, to be reinterred without delay.
The excavation was broadcast, on NOVA (PBS) in the States I believe, several years ago. One wonders if it would be possible to go ahead and rebury her yet somehow recreate the conditions by which she was preserved in the first place. The locale is in permafrost, so it should theoretically be possible to put her back. I agree with the quote about being the laughingstock of the scientific community, were they to give in to fears of natural disasters due to the removal of the body. OTOH, as one person mentioned, the reburial would largely be to "allay the fears" of the people, not to put a stop to the disasters. So in that sense, it might make for a good public relations maneuver.
More here on a similarly mummified male from the same area.
More from Iran First Archeological Park Museum of Iran Under Construction
TEHRAN (CHN) -- The first archeological park museum of Iran, which once completed could be used by students and researchers, will showcase parts of the lives of ancient people at the time of Achaemenids, Parthians and Sassanids.
According to sculptor and designer of the project, Esfandiar Iman Zadeh, the project started 3 years ago and although more than 400 statues, inscriptions and figures have been replicated, only ten percent of the project is so far completed.
The park museum is being constructed in Shahriar, southwest of Tehran, in a 25,000 square meter piece of land, which Iman Zadeh believes is not sufficient for the plans made. Funding the project by his own money, he says that it will take at least 12 years for the project to be completed with personal assets; however, government loans will help to wrap it up in just 4.
Ancient Egyptian love poetry Ancient Egyptian Love Poems Reveal a Lust for Life
Pyramids, mummies, tombs, and other icons of aristocracy and the afterlife dominate our images of ancient Egypt. But love poems composed thousands of years ago may provide a more intimate glimpse of the lives of everyday ancient Egyptians.
"Poetry is perhaps the greatest forgotten treasure of ancient Egypt," said Richard Parkinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian poetry at London's British Museum, home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo.
It sometimes loses something in translation though:
I'll go down to the water with you,
and come out to you carrying a red fish,
which is just right in my fingers.