Friday, March 17, 2006

Cuba's only mummy

http://www.jrebelde.cubaweb.cu/2006/enero-marzo/mar-8/index-momia-cuba.html
Thanks to EEF for their excellent newsletter, in which I found the following item which I had previously missed (in Spanish), looking at Cuba's only known Egyptian mummy, purchased in 1912:

Tal vez "Emilio Bacardí se rascó la cabeza e inquirió a su esposa, Doña Elvira Cape, cómo llevar a casa el “souvenir” que acababan de comprar en aquella tienda de antigüedades. . . . lo que es hoy la mayor atracción del más longevo de los museos cubanos: la única momia egipcia de que se tiene referencia en el país y en el área del Caribe. . . . Lo modesto del decorado y la técnica empleada en la confección del sarcófago que la acompaña, parecen dejar claro que no se trataba de una reina ni un personaje de la alta aristocracia, sino de una mujer de clase media."
See the full article above.

Rough translation: Perhaps Emilio Bacardi scratched his head and asked his wife how they were going to take home the souvenir that they had just purchased from that antiquities shop, which is now the major attraction of the most longstanding of the Cuban museums: the only known Egyptian mummy in Cuba and the Carribean area. . . . The modesty of both the decoration and the skill employed in the manufacture of the sarcophagus imply that this was not a queen or a member of the high aristocracy, but a middle class lady. She probably dates to the Ptolemaic period.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that your article would be better if you had a picture of the mummy.

Anonymous said...

your info was great

Andie said...

I am often asked to add more photographs to accompany posts, and I agree that it would add value to the site. However, I don't have the legal right to take other people's photographs and use them on my site. If I happen to have a photograph of my own that I can use, I do so, but with articles like this one it is most unlikely that I will have a photograph of my own to illustrate the post.