Scientists found something strange
inside of an ancient Buddha statue — the mummified remains of a monk.
The statue was subjected to CT scans in December at Meander Medical
Center in Amsterdam. Researchers determined that the monk went through
self-mummification, a process that involves being buried alive inside of
a chamber while meditating.
"The object is a rarity,"
Wilfried Rosendahl, head of the German-Mummy-Project at the
Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim, Germany, told NBC News via email.
Nothing like it has been studied in Europe before, he said. The CT scans
revealed that the mummy was a man, between 30 to 50 years old, who was
mummified and probably kept in a monastery for 200 years before he was
covered by paper and enamel to make a statue. Rosendahl and a team of
researchers determined that the mummy dates back to around the year 900
to 1,000. The statue was originally discovered in China and can
currently be seen at the Natural History Museum in Budapest.
I just read about this on the history blog; it's fascinating
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