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IN SEARCH OF THE IMMORTALS: Discovering the World's Mummy Cultures
by Howard Reid. Two wonderful color photo sections.
Condition: UNREAD 1999 Headline Books Trade Paperback, first printing. Light tanning to page edges.
Content: Reid, a documentary filmmaker and anthropologist living in England, sets out for exotic regions and vivifies ancient mummy-making cultures, artfully blending living and dead voices.
He cites ancient scribes like Herodotus, Tacitus and the Babylonian author of the Gilgamesh epic, alongside accounts of and by the living descendents of mummy makers. Primarily, he seeks to understand
"the paths that [these cultures] may have intended to tread beyond life" by examining "the bodies themselves, their attire and tomb accoutrements." Reid visits with the Maku in the Amazon to unravel the
mystery of the Chinchorros of Peru, whose mummifying culture predates Egypt's. At a winter camp in southwest Siberia, he learns about the burial rites of the Kazakh nomads' warlord ancestors. He investigates
the bog bodies of northern Europe; the peoples who established the Silk Route in China, whose mummies show evidence of an ancient European influence in the East; and the Guanches of the Canary Islands,
who shared unexpected cultural links with the Egyptians. This intellectual adventure story focuses as much on life as on death; indeed, the way a culture regards death, the author implies, says much about how it regards life.
The most interesting, IMHO, is the discussion of the "Celtic" mummies of China's Taklamakan Desert. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
$ 10.49 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority shipping available.
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Price: $ 10.49
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