The Morthouse

This is the Siberian Ice Maiden. She lived (probably nomadically and definitely tatted-up) on the steppes of Siberia sometime around the 5th century B.C. She was likely in her twenties when she died, and she was buried in the spring.

She was found in 1993 along with six horses and much finery. Fortunately for her discoverers, her grave flooded, causing a 2400-year-strong block of ice to fill out her hollow burial chamber. Unfortunately for you, I do not have a better picture to share.

From Wikipedia: 

She may have had the elevated status of a priestess in her community based upon the items found in her chamber. The Ice Maiden’s preserved skin has the mark of an animal-style deer tattoo on one of her shoulders, and another on her wrist and thumb. She was buried in a yellow silk tussah blouse, a crimson-and-white striped wool skirt with a tassel belt, thigh-high white felt leggings, with a marten fur, a small mirror made from polished metal and wood with carved deer figures, and a headdress that stood nearly three feet tall. The size of the headdress necessitated a coffin that was eight feet long. The headdress had a wooden substructure with a molded felt covering and eight carved feline figures covered in gold. There were remains of coriander seeds in a stone dish that may have been provided for the Maiden’s medicinal use.

Others have speculated that the coriander seeds were meant to disguise the corpse smell.

Unfortunately #2, the handling and transport of her body after its discovery did not proceed without serious hiccups. From NOVA’s article “Unquiet Mummies”:

Soon after the Siberian Maiden was found, for example, her protective shroud of ancient ice melted away and she began to decay. Preserved intact for two millennia, she was now assaulted by airborne fungus and bacteria, dehydrated by low humidity, and struck by the first sunlight she’d seen in thousands of years. […] Within days it became apparent to the Russian archeologists who had discovered her that the mummy was degrading rapidly.

They helicoptered her to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but the unrefrigerated delay, including almost a week of transport, took its toll. Even in the freezer labs of Novosibirsk the mummy slept uncomfortably. Hardy fungus attacked air-exposed skin and began to damage it. Desperate to stop the decay of their prize, Russian scientists chose to inter her in the same kind of pickling vat that preserved the bodies of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

The Ice Maiden is one of several Iron Age burials found in the Pazyryk Valley, in Siberia’s Ukok Plateau. You can read more about the Pazyryk burials here.

Image source: Wikipedia.

This is what’s left of a man in his early twenties who lived in Ireland sometime between 362 and 175 B.C. He’s just a partial torso and arms, and from the span of the arms they know that he stood about 6 feet 6 inches: exceptionally tall for that time. (I’ll say. That’s exceptionally tall for today.)

He’s known as Old Croghan Man, and he was found in 2003 near Croghan Hill, north of Daingean in Ireland’s County Offaly. Like all bog bodies, his real identity is unknown, but researchers have posited that he was a man of high status. His hands were well manicured, his last meal was wheat and buttermilk (possibly a ritual meal), and in the months leading up to his death he ate lots of meat. He wore a braided leather band and copper amulet around one bicep.

Despite the comfortable life suggested by nice nails and meaty diet, Old Croghan Man did not die a nice death. From Archaeology: 

He had a defensive wound on his upper left arm where he may have tried to protect himself, and had been bound by a hazel branches (withies) threaded through holes in his upper arms, stabbed in the chest, struck in the neck, decapitated, and cut in half. 

I recently watched an episode of Nova from 2006 (The Perfect Corpse), which featured Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan Man, a bog body from around the same time period who was found near Dublin, also in 2003. 

Eamonn P. Kelly of the National Museum of Ireland (where the bodies now reside) has some interesting theories about a number of Irish bog bodies, including these two. From Archaeology:

Examining the details of both men’s lives and deaths has led Kelly to suggest a new way of looking at the meaning of eight well-preserved Irish bog bodies. “I believe these men were failed kings or failed candidates for kingship who were killed and placed in bogs that formed important tribal boundaries.” Both Clonycavan and Old Croghan men’s nipples were pinched and cut. “Sucking a king’s nipples was a gesture of submission in ancient Ireland,” says Kelly. “Cutting them would have made him incapable of kingship.”

Image source: Photograph by Mark Healy, via Wikipedia.