Scan Reveals This Buddha Statue Has Ancient Mummy Inside

Story:

Scan reveals this Buddha Statue has a Mummy inside.

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CT scans reveal 1,000-Year-Old Mummy of Chinese Monk hidden inside ancient Buddhist Statue.

Picture about Scan Reveals This Buddha Statue Has Ancient Mummy Inside — Scan Reveals This Buddha Statue Has Ancient Mummy Inside

Analysis:

These messages that went viral on internet and media talk about an interesting discovery. Buddha statues are quite common and can be seen in many countries around the world, but this sitting Buddha statue is something very different – it has a Mummy inside!

The Discovery

The discovery of the Mummy inside a Buddha statue actually happened many years ago when preservationists started restoring the statue. Recently, scientists at Norway’s Meander Medical Center flipped the statue on its back for a CT scan to examine the details of the hidden mummy. They were surprised to see that the ancient gold-painted Chinese Buddha statue (bronze-like exterior) in fact hides about 1,000 year-old mummy belonging to 11th or 12th century. The mummy was found to be sitting on a rolled textile carpet that was covered in a Chinese text, according to which, the mummy was once the Buddhist monk Liuquan.

In Museum

Until last September 2014, the mummy was at the “Mummies – Life Beyond Death” exhibit at the Drents Museum in Netherlands, before moving to the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest. It looks like a large statue of Buddha on the outside, but scan research has shown that it holds inside the mummy of a Buddhist monk who lived around the year 1100. An archaeology curator at the Drents Museum, Vincent van Vilsteren said that the mummy might have been a respected Buddhist monk who was worshipped as an enlightened being after death. For the horrifying thing, researchers suspect the Buddha statue may be a case of “self-mummification”. The curator also mentioned about the tradition of self-mummification in China, Japan, Laos and Korea.