If you take someone to see the Mummies of the World Exhibition at the St. Louis Science Center, try to remember that they were once real people too.
If you take your mom or dad to see the Mummies of the World Exhibition at the Saint Louis Science Center, try to remember that they were once real people too.
“It’s really important we treat every individual inside as an individual,” said Neville Crenshaw, special exhibitions manager at the Saint Louis Science Center. “These are real people; they had loved ones and friends. We want to make sure every individual is treated ethically as possible. We refer to them by name. We want to make sure you’re learning the story the individuals can tell.”
The traveling exhibit is bringing these members of the mummy family to this family friendly science spot through Sept. 6.
“The detail work on the faces is pretty ornate,” Crenshaw said. “Meant to represent the person that is inside of it. It’s so that the soul can recognize who to return to.”
What remains true of this exhibit might be the morbid curiosity of what eventually awaits us all.
From animals and individuals that are thousands of years old from around the globe.
Or one that is the youngest from the 1990s.
“Behind me is MUMAB which stands for the Mummy from the University Maryland Baltimore. That would have been from 1994. Although it looks very Egyptian it was actually an experimental process to see if we can replicate the Egyptian process of mummification.”
Keep your eyes open for the young king looking back at you.
“No exhibition is complete without King Tut,” says Crenshaw. “Although we don’t have any of his items in here, we do have a reconstruction of what he would have looked like.”
Make no mistake, like the Body Worlds exhibit, the Mummies exhibition are a serious discussion for today’s families about life, death and beyond.
“The ability to look back in time and study those cultures that went before us,” says Crenshaw. “It’s such an interesting window into the universal human elements of how we deal with life and death and that kind of thing. But it’s also a way to see that people weren’t really so different all this time.”
Originally published at Fox 2 now