L’Enfants Bizarre

Three preserved human fetuses, presented in an antique display cabinet. The first is an altogether healthy fetus, the second suffers Polymelia, six arms, and the final, suffers a rare infection of the Shope papilloma virus, which causes a series of horn like growths in the forehead. These three are part of a large collection of human specimens, afflicted with various genetic diseases.

Siberian Princess and her 2,500 Year-Old Tattoos

The remains of the immaculately dressed ‘Princess Ukok’, 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 archaeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and the most beautiful,’ said Dr Polosmak.

The tattoos on the left shoulder of the ‘princess’  show a fantastical mythological animal: a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers. The antlers are decorated with the heads of griffons. And the same griffon’s head is shown on the back of the animal.