Naturhistorisches Museum Basel

Whether frozen glacier mummies, a mouse that perished in the cellar or an embalmed pharaoh: mummies have always captivated viewers. The Naturhistorisches Museum Basel shows one of the world’s largest mummy exhibitions exclusively in Switzerland from 16 September 2016 until 30 April 2017. World-renowned human mummies with touching stories, as well as animal mummies from Switzerland, the rest of Europe, Africa and Latin America reveal secrets about life and death. Mummies seem like they were lost in time. Unlike skeletons, they embody the individual more obviously. However, Basel’s mummy exhibition does not flaunt the dead. Rather, it makes the scientific phenomena that preserves dead bodies a subject of discussion. Which processes cause a body or parts of it to outlive time so that they do not decay?