‘Night at Museum’ to unwrap mummy mysteries
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The Barnum Museum will come alive for a very dead lady on March 25. That’s when a diminutive 5-foot 4-inch, 30-something with high cheek bones and a penchant for seasoning her veggies with sand will become a living, breathing person through the findings of Quinnipiac University’s Bioanthropology Research Institute.
After her nearly 4,000-year sleep and the application of increasingly sophisticated forensic research techniques, the secrets of Bridgeport’s own mummy, Pa-Id (pronounced “pie-eeeb”), will be unveiled by institute Executive Co-Director Gerald Conlogue at “A Night at the Museum” on Thursday, March 25 at 6 p.m.
A year after P.T. Barnum’s death in 1891, his widow, Nancy Fish Barnum, had donated the mummy to the yet-unfinished museum — originally a science and history institute — in Bridgeport. Pa-Ib waited patiently in her sarcophagus — or stone funeral receptacle — until the museum’s opening in 1893.
The mummy has been on display at the Barnum Museum ever since, shrouded in mystery.
P.T. Barnum had touted the mummy as an Egyptian priest to a pagan god living some 2,500 years ago.
With recent scientific re-testing, all that has changed — including the mummy’s sex.
Excerpted from an article by Carol Banner for The Bridgeport News
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