Vietnamese mummies face dire fate

Vietnam contains a number of mummified remains, but there are insufficient resources to study them properly.

Tragedy for mummies in Vietnam
Vietnam Net, 15 December 2012

With just a coffin made of rare wood, a few hundreds of liters of attar and the anaerobic techniques, the dead look like sleeping people for a thousand year.

Vietnam is the land of mummies. In the world, the discovery of an intact mummy of a few hundred years of age will cause shock to the scientific community, but in Vietnam, each several years a mummy is discovered. But the fate of mummies in Vietnam is pathetic.

Archaeologist Tang Ba Hoanh, former director of the Museum of Hai Duong Province, who participated in dozens of excavations of mummies, said: “It is the best to fill up mummy tombs. We should not unearth anything. Let our children study the mummies when they have sufficient conditions. If we touch them (mummies), we only destroy them.”

Hai Duong’s people used to flock to the provincial museum to admire the giant Han tomb, dating back nearly 2,000 years, which was excavated and brought to the museum by Mr. Hoanh.

Full story here.