Have you seen mummies in movies such as The Mummy and The Mummy’s Curse?
They get mad when their centuries-long sleep is disturbed. In reality, finding a mummy makes everyone involved happy. Everyone but the mummies, that is! Mummies are the preserved bodies of people and animals. They give us important information about people who may have lived more than 3,000 years ago.
One amazing mummy find was made in 1987. Walter Alva was director of the Bruning Museum in Peru. He was trying to find out where some beautiful ancient goldwork was coming from. He did a lot of research. He found that it was coming from the village of Sipán in northwestern Peru. That’s where a people called the Moche had lived between the first and eighth centuries A.D. Until recently, little was known about the Moche.
Dr. Alva went to the site. He began to excavate, or dig it up. A big treasure awaited him. These were the richest tombs ever found by archaeologists in the Western Hemisphere.
