Modified Mummy
Modification
Body modification (or body alteration) is the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, such as sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, aesthetic reasons, denoting affiliation, trust and loyalty, religious reasons, shock value, and self-expression. It can range from the socially acceptable decoration (e.g., pierced ears in many societies) to the religiously mandated (e.g., circumcision in a number of cultures), and everywhere in between. Body art is the modification of any part of the human body for spiritual, religious, artistic or aesthetic reasons.
Explicit ornaments
* Body piercing - Permanent placement of jewelry through an artificial fistula; sometimes further modified by stretching
* Ear piercing - The most common type of body modification
* Dermal anchoring Similar to transdermal implants, giving the appearance of a small bead on the skin
* Pearling - Also known as genital beading
* Neck ring- Multiple Neck rings are worn to stretch the neck.
* Scrotal implants
* Eyeball tattooing - Injection of a pigment into the cornea.
* Extraocular implant (eyeball jewelry) - The implantation of jewelry in the outer layer of the eye.
* Surface Piercing - A surface piercing is a piercing where the entrance and exit holes are pierced through the same flat area of skin.
* Microdermal implants
* Transdermal implant - implantation of an object below the dermis, but which exits the skin at one or more points
Mummification
A mummy is a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness, very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs. Presently, the oldest discovered (naturally) mummified human corpse was a decapitated head dated as 6,000 years old and was found in 1936. The most famous Egyptian mummies are those of Seti I and Rameses II (13th century BC), though the earliest known Egyptian mummy, nicknamed 'Ginger' for its hair colour, dates back to approximately 3300 BC.
Mummies of humans and other animals have been found throughout the world, both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts to preserve the dead. There are more than 1000 mummies in dry Xinjiang China. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats. There are so called mummies of mythical beings.
Mummies in Fiction
Mummies are commonly featured in horror genres as undead creatures. During the 20th century, horror films and other mass media popularized the notion of a curse associated with mummies. One of the earliest appearances was The Jewel of Seven Stars, a horror novel by Bram Stoker first published in 1903 that concerned an archaeologist's plot to revive an ancient Egyptian mummy. This book later served as the basis for the 1971 film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.
Films representing such a belief include the 1932 movie The Mummy starring Boris Karloff as Imhotep; four subsequent 1940s' Universal Studios mummy films which featured a mummy named Kharis, who also was the title mummy in The Mummy, a 1959 Hammer remake of The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Tomb; and a remake of the original film that was released in 1999 (and later spawned two direct sequels and a spinoff movie). The belief in cursed mummies probably stems in part from the supposed curse on the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1979, the American Broadcasting Company aired a TV holiday show, The Halloween That Almost Wasn't, in which a mummy from Egypt (Robert Fitch) arrived at Count Dracula's castle without speaking.
The 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter brought mummies into the mainstream. Slapstick comedy trio the Three Stooges humorously exploited the discovery in the short film We Want Our Mummy, in which they explored the tomb of the midget King Rutentuten (and his Queen, Hotsy Totsy). A decade later, they played crooked used chariot salesmen in Mummy's Dummies, in which they ultimately assisted a different King Rootentootin (Vernon Dent) with a toothache.