Girolamo Segato’s Mysterious Petrified Mummies

For thousands of years, different cultures across continents have successfully preserved bodies of their ancestors. For the Egyptians, mummification was an integral part of the rituals for the dead and an important requirement to living well in the afterlife. In Christian tradition, bodies of saints were preserved and venerated. In modern times, mummification has become essential for studying and teaching anatomy to medical students. Additionally, embalming allows corpses to be transported to far-off locations without decomposing and allows the bodies to be displayed during funeral and memorial ceremonies.