Gallery • 5 Photos

John Weinstein for The Field Museum of Chicago

A Chancay head, or “false head” sat atop a mummy in the Chancay culture. “The Chancay people mummified their loved ones in a curled up position and wrapped them in colorful ponchos and cloth,” says the Museum.

Walk into history with the new exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota, Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs. The exhibit runs now until Sept. 5, and features mummies from both Egypt and Peru. The exhibit will only be available at two more museums before returning to where it was originally made, the Field Museum of Chicago, in 2018.

In discovering these mummies, scientists used high tech CT scans and 3D printing to examine bodies that were buried as long as 5,000 years ago. By doing this, they caused no harm to the mummies and did not even need to take them out of their caskets. The Field Museum of Chicago was the first to begin work on the mummies, and is now allowing the exhibit to travel to other states, including the Science Museum of Minnesota, which began its exhibit Sept. 5.

According to the Science Museum of Minnesota, “your students will explore the mummies not as relics, but as sacred storehouses of information.”

The showcase explores mummies from Predynastic Egypt to Pre-Columbian Peru, and shows how latest technologies are allowing scientists to look at the past, creating a contrast within the exhibit of the future and the past.

“[The exhibit shows] how the latest technologies are making it possible for scientists to decipher the startling details of the distant past,” the Museum website said.

The exhibit has interactive touch tables that allow you to “unwrap” the mummies, to see vivid details about the mummies. The exhibit includes one of the oldest mummies in the world, and appears alongside other findings from the same period.

“Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs lets you see how modern technology has revealed intricate details about the lives and customs of these ancient people,” the website said.

The exhibit is divided into two sections, one that looks at the mummies of Peru, that is older than the Egypt mummifications by 2,000 years, and one that looks at the better known mummies-Egyptian.

“[The experience is] really cool, to look at different cultures that mummy the dead, and to look at it with such cool technology,” senior Bella Johnson said.

In the section that looks at Peru, visitors can examine the history of Chinchorro, Paracas, Chancay, Nazcan, and later Incan peoples. In the Egyptian section, people will be able to experience an interactive walk-in tomb that closely examines real sarcophagus fragments and an intricately-painted coffin.

“You can look closely at all the objects and get a real feel for the history involved with mummification. It’s amazing how they’re able to discover so much about the mummies through [the technology they used in the process],” Johnson said.

The exhibit gives a complex look at one of the more interesting sides of history by combining history with the modern world.

According to Minneapolis.org, “Mummies: New Secrets from the Tombs tells an inspiring and memorable story of modern science meeting ancient history to reveal the unique and once-hidden stories of the individuals represented in the Field Museum’s extraordinary mummy collection.”