The ancient mummy of a mysterious young woman, known as the Ukok Princess, is finally returning home to the Altai Republic this month.
She is to be kept in a special mausoleum at the Republican National
Museum in capital Gorno-Altaisk, where eventually she will be displayed
in a glass sarcophagus to tourists.
For the past 19 years, since her discovery, she was kept mainly at a
scientific institute in Novosibirsk, apart from a period in Moscow when
her remains were treated by the same scientists who preserve the body of
Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.
To mark the move 'home', The Siberian Times has obtained intricate
drawings of her remarkable tattoos, and those of two men, possibly
warriors, buried near her on the remote Ukok Plateau, now a UNESCO world
cultural and natural heritage site, some 2,500 metres up in the Altai
Mountains in a border region close to frontiers of Russia with Mongolia,
China and Kazakhstan.
They are all believed to be Pazyryk people - a nomadic people
described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus - and
the colourful body artwork is seen as the best preserved and most
elaborate ancient tattoos anywhere in the world.
To many observers, it is startling how similar they are to modern-day tattoos.
The remains of the immaculately dressed 'princess', aged around 25
and preserved for several millennia in the Siberian permafrost, a
natural freezer, were discovered in 1993 by Novosibirsk scientist
Natalia Polosmak during an archeological expedition.
Buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual
escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, perhaps
more likely a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman than
an ice princess.
There, too, was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made
from felt, wood, bronze and gold. And a small container of cannabis,
say some accounts, along with a stone plate on which were the burned
seeds of coriander.
'Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world,
those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and
the most beautiful,' said Dr Polosmak.
'More ancient tattoos have been found, like the Ice Man found in the
Alps - but he only had lines, not the perfect and highly artistic images
one can see on the bodies of the Pazyryks...
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