Tomb robbers cut up an ancient mummy and dumped it near a garbage dump in Yemen, officials said.
Photo from the Main Organization of Antiquities and Museums
An ancient mummy was recently found discarded near a dumpster in Yemen, officials said.
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The preserved corpse, which is around 2,000 years old, appears to have been cut open by grave robbers before it was left for trash, according to a March 8 statement from the General Organization of Antiquities and Museums.
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The mummy was taken to Yemen’s National Museum in Sanaa to be examined and treated for bacterial decay, the Facebook post says.
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The finding of the gutted and abandoned mummy triggered outrage in Yemen, according to Arab News.
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“My sorrow and rage over the fate of a nation and its people is immense,” the country’s one-time culture minister wrote on Facebook, according to the outlet.
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Ancient Yemeni people used a variety of materials in their embalming and burial process, including cactus and henna, a plant-based dye.
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Mummified remains were sometimes placed inside the skins of camels or cows.
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Yemen, located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, has been embroiled in a multiparty civil war since 2014, and the country’s population is “enduring the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” according to the United Nations Foundation.
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As the war has raged on, some of the country’s mummies have begun to rot amid electrical outages and a shortage of preservative materials, according to a 2017 Reuters report.
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