A WALK TO THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PAST

Ancient Egyptian Mummies are fascinating to many people, including me. I also like the ones from the movies, even if the actors are much too tall to be playing a person from thousands of years ago. Boris Karloff? Christopher Lee?

It turns out that the art and science of the human mummification process as practiced by the Ancient Egyptians goes back to an earlier date than previously thought -- to more than 6,000 years ago. Stephen Buckley, an archaeological chemist at the University of York, led a team of researchers recently who studied burial cloths retrieved from cemeteries in the 1920s and 1930s. These fabrics are held in Britain’s Bolton Museum. My first inclination was to make sure I visit there next time I'm in the U.K., but then I remembered I live very close to the Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto, Canada. (This museum is famous for its mummy collection.) The current expression is, "hello!"

I really dig this sample of fabric...