Mummies of Saints: a particular category of Italian mummies

Abstract

Whenever anybody mentions mummies, the mind reverts straight away to Ancient Egypt and both experts and laymen start picturing the beautiful mummies of the Pharaohs still preserved in their splendid tombs. Everybody knows the most important and replete collections like those of the British Museum in London, the Archeological Museum in Cairo, and the Egyptian Museum in Turin. But it is not generally known that Italy has an outstanding collection of Egyptian mummies even in small town museums the length and breadth of the country. The results of an inventory we made fully support Italy’s claim (1). There are 91 Egyptian Collections, 28 of which have complete or incomplete mummies, exhibited or in store, totalling 142 mummies and 214 fragments. In Turin alone there are 96 mummies and 85 fragments and as consequence many historical and anthropological studies especially those of the University Institute of Anthropology (2, 3). However, apart from Egyptian mummies, we must also say that in Italy there is an unexpectedly large number of other mummies (4).