ATDTDA (14) references p 378

[David Morris]

On 7/24/07, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net
> >Panteon - (this is pretty interesting)(yeah, wikipedia again) In the Panteón catacombs to the west of the city is a famous cemetery noted for the natural mummies produced by unknown means. About 1 in 100 bodies buried here experience natural mummification.
> >
> >In the late 1800s the town instituted a "burial tax" for the families of the deceased. When some of the poorest families were unable to pay the tax, their relatives were dug up and placed on public view in a purpose-built museum.
> >
> >The 'Guanajuato Mummy Museum' still adds corpses to this day; two children were added who died in 1984 most recently due to their relatives' failure to pay the $ 20 per 5 year rental fee. The museum holds 111 corpses resting on velvet pillows. Today, it is reported that the proceeds from the museum help fund the city's coffers to a considerable degree.
>
> Yikes!  This is a pretty gruesome, Dickensian punishment for the poor.

I wouldn't consider display of my mummified body in a museum
"punishment," though i guess some would consider it degrading.  Many
people through the ages have sought after a form of personal corpse
preservation for some sort of display.

For an extreme example:

http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/2007/06/27/sokushinbutsu-the-self-mummified-monks-of-japan/

Scattered throughout Northern Japan are two dozen mummified Japanese
monks known as Sokushinbutsu. Followers of Shugendô, an ancient form
of Buddhism, the monks died in the ultimate act of self-denial.

For three years the priests would eat a special diet consisting only
of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical
activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark
and roots for another three years and began drinking a poisonous tea
made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls.
This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most
importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to
decay after death. Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself
in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move
from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was
an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside
know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube
was removed and the tomb sealed.

Not all monks who attempted self-mummification were successful. When
the tombs were finally opened, some bodies were found to have rotted.
These monks were resealed in their tombs. They were respected for
their endurance, but they were not worshiped. Those monks who had
succeeded in mummifying themselves were raised to the status of
Buddha, put on display, and tended to by their followers. The Japanese
government outlawed Sokushunbutsu in the late 19th century, though the
practice apparently continued into the 20th.