A REMARKABLE 2,000 year old “sleeping beauty” has emerged from a Russian reservoir in Siberia. The ᴍᴜᴍᴍɪᴇғɪᴇᴅ lady of the lake was dressed in a silk skirt in her grave and a pouch of pine nuts lay on her chest to take to the afterlife.
The ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ was not a traditional ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ like the one pictured above.
Archeologists believe she is a young ‘Hun woman’ who wore a jet gemstone buckle on her beaded belt. A significant fall in the water level of a reservoir upstream of the giant 794ft tall Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectricity dam on the River Yenisei led to the burial site of the ancient woman – as old as Christ – reappearing on the shoreline. “In her birch bark make-up box, she had a Chinese mirror,” reported The Siberian Times. “Near her remains – accidentally ᴍᴜᴍᴍɪᴇғɪᴇᴅ – was a Hun-style vase.”
Archeologist Dr Marina Kilunovskaya, from St Petersburg’s Institute of History of Material Culture, said: “During excavations the ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ of a young woman was found on the shore of the reservoir. “The lower part of the body was especially well preserved … “This is not a classic ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ – in this case, the burial was tightly closed with a stone lid, enabling a process of natural mummification.” Remarkably, the mummification partially survived her burial plot being drowned during the Soviet era in the early 1980s.
The ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ was found on the River Yenisei.
A recent fall in the water level of the reservoir in Tuva region led to her reappearance after two millennia. “The ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ was in quite a good condition, with soft tissues, skin, clothing and belongings intact,” said a scientist. Natalya Solovieva, the institute’s deputy director, said: ‘On the ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ are what we believe to be silk clothes, a beaded belt with a jet buckle, apparently with a pattern… “Near the head was found a round wooden box covered with birch-bark in which lay a Chinese mirror in a felt case.” Close to the young woman were two vessels, one a Hun-type vase.
Restoration experts have started working on the ᴍᴜᴍᴍʏ.
Analysis of the find is expected to yield a wealth of information on her life and times. Scientists received a grant from the Russian Geographical Society to rescue the unique archeological finds in flooded areas.