Mummy murder mysteries

“The Mysterious Bog People”

Through Jan. 22, 2006

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The… “The Mysterious Bog People”

Through Jan. 22, 2006

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The Carnegie has never been so dark.

Through the classic Hall of Birds, museumgoers are greeted by blackened doors labeled “The Mysterious Bog People.” Inside, an eerie sound fills the room: a somber Stone Age horn wailing in low tones. A speaker tells the dramatic tale of a 16-year-old girl murdered and thrown into a pit of peat moss. Her scientifically reconstructed cranium flashes behind a silk screen.

Take a few moments on one of the rustic wooden benches and listen to an old, Dutch peat miner recount the time he found a body in the bog until your eyes can adjust to the dimly lit displays.

Despite the savings on illumination, this exhibit seems to pull out most of the heavy hitters as far as the study of bog people goes: hundreds of axe heads and relics dating from the Stone Age line glass shelves, bog-mummified cloth worn by the victims is still preserved as to the day it was worn and crowd favorite, “the wax bread facsimile,” offers an appetizing crust of bog life. Look carefully — these petrified discs are rather unassuming symbols, intended to serve as sustenance in the afterlife.

All the curious gold, bronze and amber jewelry visitors could possibly want is put together nicely in a truly educational fashion. There are grinding stones to manipulate, cloth reconstructions and dying herbs. Patrons can even amass their own Bog Person history in the BSI (Bog Science Investigation) room, which, despite a cheesy name and childish pretense, is really quite difficult.

Choose one of five color-coded sheets before embarking upon this 20-minute-or-so encounter to determine a bog persona. Ad caveat: Choose carefully. A yellow sheet — an unwise choice in the reviewer’s opinion — will frustrate and boggle even a whole team of thoughtful minds, as it’s seemingly impossible to deduce even the most basic of facts about this individual. Such ambiguity is, however, the nature of archeology and the source of much of the dispute behind the bog people’s controversy.

And then there are the bog people themselves. While the famous Tollund man cannot be found here (his permanent home is the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, where they fear any movement could collapse his preserved head), the Carnegie’s collection of bog people — seven bog mummies, rather — is equally intriguing.

Despite being mostly leathery soles of human skin and bone fragments, the bog mummies, nevertheless, come with a daunting amount of carefully constructed history as well as plenty of room for conjecture. There are the two men lying side by side, naked, wrapped in the finest cloth available during Roman times, both throats slit. Murder? Suicide? Or maybe just a case of Bronze Age S’M gone awry.

Returning to the fate of the 16-year-old girl strangled by a finely woven scarf: Was she a societal sacrifice or a defiled virgin, victim to her angry father?

Even if you lack the slightest interest in these questions, bog mummies are fascinating to view and serve as grotesque reminders of ancient barbarism. Plan to spend at least an hour looking around at the peat-mummified artifacts and leathery bodies.

So, prepare to be shocked and awed, but expect nothing outside of what you’d normally see at a natural-history museum: neat old stuff in cases.