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Articles on Mummies

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It would be fun to be able to shrink people and objects, but it’s something we can only imagine. Jasmin Merdan/Moment via Getty Images

Will scientists ever be able to shrink and grow stuff?

The movies make it seem like someday we’ll be able to make people and objects grow really big or shrink really small. Whether this will be possible comes down to the smallest of things.
A scene from the Books of the Dead (based at the Egyptian Museum) shows the ibis-headed god Thoth recording the result of “the final judgement”. Wasef et al./PLOS ONE

Holy bin chickens: ancient Egyptians tamed wild ibis for sacrifice

An estimated 1.75 million ibises were deposited at a single location in ancient Egypt. But the birds disappeared entirely from the region around 1850, and no one knows why.
An Islamic revolution ran the shah out of Iran in 1979. Now, his father’s mummified body has resurfaced. AP Photo

Unearthed mummy recalls an Iran before the ayatollahs

A mummy unearthed during construction in Iran may be the body of a former shah. For the Islamic regime, the discovery is an unwelcome reminder of Iran’s secular past. For protesters, it holds promise.
This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, carefully sculpted around the morphological features of his skull, suggests how he may have looked alive nearly 9,000 years ago. Brittney Tatchell, Smithsonian Institution

Kennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won’t

A 9,000-year-old skeleton became a high-profile and highly contested case for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. How do we respectfully deal with ancient human remains?

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