The exhibit has been on display at the museum for 10 years, yet few visitors know about the origin of the corpse due to the sparse descriptions attached inside the glass case.

What is the attraction of this enigmatic supine figure? It’s that the woman happens to have died some 140 years ago but her remains have been mummified, so the wear and tear of time have not impacted much on this lonely cadaver whiling away in a corner of history.

Arduous dig

According to Dr. Ba Trung Phu, head of the Display and Propaganda Division of the museum, the mummy was discovered in an ancient tomb at the Cai Village in HCMC’s District 5 when 16 ancient tombs in the area were excavated and cleared 14 years ago to reclaim land for construction purposes.

The tomb was made from coral-based raw lime, sand, molasses, active charcoal, and other unknown materials.

The compound of these ingredients had made the structure “harder than concrete,” according to the excavators.

To break the tomb, workers first had to demolish the structures around it in an area of some 100 square meters.

These structures included a gate 2.4 meters tall and more than 50 centimeters thick with a door that was more than one meter high.

The tomb offered up a coffin with the mummy, which was covered in a mass of the construction materials extending from the ground surface to a depth of seven meters.

“Archeologists had to ask 15 workers to chisel the mass for 41 days until they saw a layer of sand with a thickness of about 40 centimeters that covered the coffin,” said Phu.

Mysterious mummy

Do Dinh Truat, the senior archeologist in charge of the excavation, supervised the work from beginning to end and wrote the first report describing details of the tomb and the history of the mummy.

After strenuous efforts, workers unearthed the coffin that was placed inside a wooden box 2.2 meters long and 50 centimeters high.

The whole structure was covered with a layer of ancient Vietnamese paint which made it waterproof.

The coffin contained the mummy and a variety of trinkets.

Two sedge mats were draped over the top.

Underneath was a 10-centimeter-thick layer of paper absorbed with chemical solution, a piece of silk with words, a layer of fabric with nine knots, and finally, a mummy covered by satin and brocade at the bottom.

The casket also stored brooches, rings, silk, brocade, clothes, and shoes.

Based on the method of burial and the objects discovered with the corpse, researchers surmised the mummy had been an aristocratic woman of the Nguyen Dynasty who had perished by 1868.

The mummy was brought to a freezing house at the HCMC University of Medicine and Pharmacology for research, before being relocated to its current resting place at the Vietnam Museum of History.

 “Our museum has signed a contract with a specialized agency to have the mummy preserved with appropriate medical methods,” Phu said.

Experts nowadays periodically open the glass case to treat the mummy to maintain its durable condition.

Reported by Giao Huong