Announcer: The following program
contains disturbing subject matter and images.
Viewer discretion is advised.
William shatner: A pharaoh's tomb
with a deadly curse.
A dictator
who gets younger with time.
And life-sized dolls
made from human remains.
For thousands of years,
people around the world have practiced mummification
in the belief that one day...
...The dead will rise again.
Today we consider such views to be preposterous.
Irrational. Unbelievable.
But what if we're wrong?
What if the ancient art of mummification
could somehow, someday...
Bring back the dead?
Well...
That is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
a young boy working for a british excavation team
led by archaeologist howard carter
is riding his donkey home one night,
when suddenly the animal's hoof slips
into a hole below the sand.
Carter and his team later excavate the site
and discover a mysterious chamber
hidden deep beneath the shifting sands.
Peering inside, they lay their eyes
upon one of the most incredible
archaeological finds in history.
A massive treasure trove
of gold and ebony artifacts,
all laid out before another chamber
guarded by two imposing statues
and sealed shut
with an intricate combination of rope knots and clay.
The long-lost tomb
of king tutankhamen.
It was absolutely a magnificent discovery,
made headline news all over the world,
and really sort of captured public imagination
at-at just the right time.
Unlike most of the other tombs that had been discovered
of the ancient egyptian pharaohs,
king tut's tomb was untouched.
It had not been plundered, it had not been destroyed,
and so there was a tremendous wealth of archaeological data
as well as just a stunning display of artifacts.
Shatner: After spending nearly three months cataloguing
the more than 5,000 relics
found within the tomb's antechamber...
...On February 16, 1923,
at just after 2:00 in the afternoon,
members of the press gathered to watch howard carter
finally break the seal
protecting king tut's burial chamber,
which had lain undisturbed
for more than 3,000 years.
Nicholas brown: Carter started excavation of the burial chamber
within tutankhamen's tomb
and he found the intact burial of tutankhamen,
which was contained, essentially,
within nine protective layers.
The sarcophagus is very elaborate.
It's got gold, it's inlaid with precious stones,
and there's several layers of it
before you get down to the central layer,
which is, of course, the mummy
of king tutankhamen himself.
Brown: Once carter began unwrapping the mummy of tutankhamen
and removed the funerary death mask
and made his way through
the different mummy bandages and the bundle itself,
he was able to see the face of tutankhamen,
which hadn't been seen by any living person
for nearly 3,500 years.
So in a way, the opening of the tomb of tutankhamen
is a kind of a resurrection.
Shatner: The discovery of king tut's mummy
launched an international media frenzy,
making headlines in every major newspaper around the world.
But howard carter and his team
had barely begun enjoying their success
when several strange things
started happening to them.
That evening howard carter is having his dinner
and hears a commotion in the next room.
Goes in, and his pet canary
is being attacked
inside its cage by a king cobra.
Now, the king cobra is a symbol for the pharaoh.
And a canary, the symbolism.
The canary is the first to go.
The canary is the weakest and a warning.
After that, lord carnarvon,
the financier of the whole expedition,
was there on site.
And then, while they're inventorying the treasures,
he gets a mosquito bite.
A few days later, accidentally nicks the bump with his razor.
The bump gets infected.
It leads to blood poisoning,
and he dies of it.
A prominent british radiologist came out to the site
to x-ray king tut,
and shortly after handling the mummy,
he catches a mysterious disease
that cannot be diagnosed, cannot be treated,
and it kills him.
Shatner: All told, the deaths of no fewer
than seven members of howard carter's expedition
took place shortly after the reopening
of tutankhamen's burial chamber.
While it was certainly possible
their untimely deaths were nothing more than coincidences,
many believed that by disturbing king tut's mummy,
the archaeologists had somehow triggered
a deadly curse.
To the ancient egyptians,
death was not the end.
But in order to guarantee yourself eternal life,
you actually had to preserve your earthly body
for the spirit to be able to function properly.
The idea of a mummy curse
is to keep those people out of the tombs.
The egyptians said
if you bothered these mummies,
you would have a problem.
And people who have discovered those tombs
actually ended up dying weird ways.
If that's not a curse, what would be?
The ancient egyptians prepared the body for mummification by
removing the internal organs.
They would remove the brain through the nose
with a metal hook
and clean out all of the organs
and put them in jars, except for the heart,
because for them the heart was the key to the afterlife.
And then, at that point,
they'd wrap the body in linen,
and then they'd put them in sarcophagi
that looked like human beings
and they were made to resemble the deceased.
The egyptians thought the soul had multiple parts.
Upon death, certain parts of the soul
went down into the earth,
certain parts went up into the sky,
and then other parts remained with the actual body.
If you want that person perpetuated for eternity,
you need to maintain
all aspects of the soul together.
That can happen if the body is preserved.
Thompson: The idea was that at some point
you will face the gods
and those who are unworthy
would be obliterated for all time.
So these tombs were meant to be there
until the day of judgment.
You were not supposed to open these.
Shatern: Is it possible that the ancient egyptians
were able to preserve
the soul of king tut within his mummified remains,
effectively keeping his spirit alive for thousands of years?
And if so, could the pharaoh's spirit have unleashed a curse
upon the men responsible for disturbing
his sacred burial chamber? Perhaps.
But there are some researchers
who claim that even before king tut's tomb was disturbed,
there was already a pharaoh's curse in place.
A curse that was associated not with king tut
but with his father, akhenaten.
Young: Akhenaten was controversial
because he used his considerable power as pharaoh
to change the religious system.
Ancient egypt had always been polytheistic,
many gods,
and then there is a new pharaoh with a new idea.
Akhenaten announces there will be one god,
they will be a monotheistic people.
Aten, the sun god,
would be the one divinity
they all worshipped.
The sun disc.
It shook the empire in really terrible ways.
Brown: Part of this religious revolution
included purposely erasing
the names of older gods,
closing down their temples,
erasing their names from monuments,
and trying to obliterate these other deities
that the egyptians used to worship.
Shatner: Before the reign of akhenaten,
the most sacred deity of the ancient egyptians
was known as amun-ra,
the chief of all egyptian gods.
According to legend, amun-ra was angered
by akhenaten's acts of heresy
and took vengeance upon the pharaoh.
For his offense, akhenaten was cursed by amun-ra,
a curse unique to religious views in egypt.
He would be cursed after death to wander endlessly.
His soul would never be reunited with his body,
which was the point of all those funerary practices.
He would be disconnected and dislodged forever.
Shatner: If akhenaten's soul was doomed
to never reach the afterlife,
was king tut's body mummified
and placed within a sealed burial chamber
so that he could escape the fate of his father?
And is that why breaking the seals on the tomb of king tut
brought a curse upon howard carter and his team?
If the ancient egyptians were right about the power
of mummification, then it might be possible.
But the egyptians weren't the only ancient civilization
that believed mummies held the secret of eternal life.
Some were so convinced of the power of mummification,
they didn't even bother to wait...
Until death.
Shatner: Every three years, the villagers
in this mountainous region
gather to celebrate with members of their families.
But what's odd about this party is that the guests of honor
are all dead.
Thompson: We look at these corpses and say that's a dead person.
They look at that same corpse
and say, "no, no, that spirit's still there."
and if the spirit's still there, well, then that's
the person, that-- the person is still there.
Shatner: While the idea of having a get-together
with your dead relatives might sound unnerving,
the truth is ritual preservation and
personification of the dead is actually
very common around the world.
When we think of mummies, we often go
directly to ancient egypt.
But we find mummies in other cultures
around the world in various forms.
So we find this sort of very elaborate mummification
preparals in the aztec empire
and the incan empire.
And in asia, there is an interesting
history of mummification.
Shatner: But of all the forms of mummification
that have been practiced,
the one that is perhaps the most extraordinary
and the most unsettling
involves turning people into mummies
while they're still alive.
Just outside the tsuruoka city limits,
sits churen-ji temple.
Surrounded by 200-year-old cherry blossom trees,
churen-ji is similar to many other
rural temples throughout the region,
with one notable exception.
The monk who presides here
has been seated in meditative prayer
for almost 200 years.
Jeremiah: Among the mummified monks
of yamagata, japan, sunada tetsu is perhaps the most famous.
And his body is currently located at churen temple,
in northern yamagata prefecture.
Sunada tetsu is an 18th-century buddhist monk,
who wasn't a religious person at all.
He didn't plan on entering religion.
However, he ended up killing two samurai.
And at the time,
19th-century japan, if you kill two samurai
and you're a commoner, you're gonna be killed.
But local temples were exempt from that law.
So he joined churen temple,
and over time became a believer
and one of the most holy people
in japan, traveling throughout
the japanese countryside, repairing bridges,
doing anything he could to help people.
Shatner: Sunada tetsu
was so dedicated to serving the japanese people
that the onetime outlaw earned a reputation
as a miracle worker.
But as old age began approaching,
sunada tetsu realized there was only one way
for him to continue his good works well into the future.
The ancient art of self-mummification,
known as sokushinbutsu.
In this particular tradition
of, uh, buddhism that we find in japan,
there's this practice of sokushinbutsu,
which is basically a mummification practice
the practitioner undertakes when they're still alive.
People who engaged in the process of self-mummification,
they wanted to preserve the flesh
because they thought there was a divine merit
that could be of use of people who are still alive.
Shatner: In order for a monk's soul to shed his body
in the proper manner, the practitioners of sokushinbutsu
were required to undergo a very specific process.
A process which,
as one can imagine,
isn't exactly pleasant.
Jeremiah: The process of self-mummification
is to gradually decrease the amount of food
you're ingesting, and in place,
start ingesting things that are preservative in nature.
And in the case of the self-mummified monks,
they were pine bark,
pine resin...
And urushi tea.
Urushi tea, which comes from the lacquer tree,
is considered to be extremely toxic,
but it also lacquers the body from inside out, and it removes
moisture at the same time from the organs
and presents some kind of embalming faculties.
When the monks have completed their pre-mummification diet,
they would be placed into a box made of pinewood
and buried underground
with a little bell.
Once the bell stopped ringing,
the other monks would know that the self-mummifying
practitioner had, uh, deceased inside the box.
Shatner: According to historical accounts,
sunada tetsu spent 3,000 days,
which is more than eight years,
starving himself in preparation for his living burial.
After his body was eventually unearthed,
it showed no decay whatsoever,
signifying that his spirit was indeed pure.
But as morbid as sunada tetsu's tale may be,
he was not the first to attempt
the extreme ritual of sokushinbutsu.
Nor the last.
The founder of esoteric buddhism in japan
was believed to have, uh, studied in china,
and, uh, learned about this practice there.
And subsequently brought it to japan,
upon which some japanese monks, the most intrepid amongst them,
would have picked it up and applied it.
But the self-mummification practice
was outlawed in the 19th century
because it was rarely successful.
Shatner: Today, the mummies of only 24 monks who underwent
the ritual of sokushinbutsu remain known,
although historians estimate that hundreds
underwent the journey before it was declared illegal.
But why would so many willingly attempt what was essentially
a slow and agonizing suicide?
As it turns out, there was a very good reason.
They wanted to become what are referred to as...
"living buddhas."
jeremiah: They actually wanted to cause their own death
so they could be in meditative posture
so they could direct their soul
where they wanted it to go afterwards.
That's why they're considered living buddha.
These mummies are still alive because
they are in between the realm of life and death
and perhaps they can influence the two of them.
Shatner: Could dying by self-mummification
actually be the secret to living forever?
Gauging by the number of visitors who come
to seek his blessing every year,
it would appear sunada tetsu certainly has achieved
a form of eternal life.
Just like another mummy who was also put on display.
One who achieved immortality
not by ending his own life,
but someone else's.
Shatner: The st. Louis world's fair opens to packed crowds.
Over the course of the next six months,
more than 19 million people stroll down
a mile-long midway lined with exhibitions
showcasing the world's most advanced science,
technology, art...
And one rather bizarre attraction:
The alleged mummy of john wilkes booth,
the man who assassinated president abraham lincoln.
Nate orlowek: Encountering a mummy that is being
claimed to be john wilkes booth,
the man who killed who I think most people think
was our greatest president, would be pretty mind-boggling.
Young: So it was a high point of many people's lives to see
the mummy of the dark figure of american history,
john wilkes booth.
To see some part of that story,
even the horrific part of it,
is still an expression of grief
and attachment to abraham lincoln.
Shatner: For nearly three decades, the mummy of john wilkes booth,
america's most infamous assassin,
drew eager crowds around the world.
Which was extraordinary,
because according to the united states government,
the body of john wilkes booth
had been buried in a baltimore cemetery
since 1865.
According to most historical accounts,
after john wilkes booth shot
president lincoln during a performance at ford's theatre
in washington, d.C. On April 14, 1865...
(gunshot)
...Booth fled on horseback to virginia,
eluding union soldiers that were stationed
at the city exits by vice president andrew johnson
with orders to kill anyone attempting to leave.
Booth was eventually cornered inside a barn
just south of port royal, virginia,
where-- after he refused to surrender--
union troops shot and killed him on April 26, 1865.
Orlowek: The barn was set on fire.
The traditional version is that the body was identified
and eventually the government released the body
to the booth family.
Shatner: After receiving the body,
booth's family supposedly buried him in the family plot
at a baltimore cemetery.
But if that's the case,
how did his preserved remains end up
as a traveling sideshow attraction?
According to some researchers, it was all due
to a chance encounter involving a man named finis l. Bates
that occurred 12 years after booth's supposed death
in 1865.
Mark ebner: Bates was this lawyer slash carney barker,
slash showman.
He was living in a town called granbury, texas,
and befriended a guy named john st. Helen.
Orlowek: One night, st. Helen became very ill
and called bates to his bedside.
And he gasped out to bates that in fact,
he was really john wilkes booth.
Bates, of course, thought the man was hallucinating,
because everybody had been told that john wilkes booth
had been killed 12 years earlier.
Booth slash st. Helens,
he recovers from this illness and he skips town.
Years later, in enid, oklahoma,
there is a guy, david george.
George had enough of this world and he killed himself.
And there was no next of kin,
but he did leave word,
"please call finis l. Bates," and that they did.
Shatner: As the story goes,
when finis l. Bates arrived in enid, oklahoma
and viewed the dead body of david george,
he made two startling observations.
The first was that david george's appearance
closely matched that of john st. Helen's,
the man who had claimed to be john wilkes booth.
And the second was that george's body
had been strangely preserved.
Young: The undertaker,
having no money for a burial,
puts arsenic in the veins to preserve the body,
mummified the body,
and then puts it in a store window as a gag
holding a newspaper.
So they get ahold of bates,
who puts two and two together,
realizes it's the man who claimed to be john wilkes booth,
takes possession of this mummy,
he goes into the sideshow business
and for a small price,
you could see the mummy of john wilkes booth.
Shatner: If finis l. Bates's story is true,
and john wilkes booth lived under
at least two other identities before dying
in enid, oklahoma in 1903,
the question is: How did booth escape the barn
where he was supposedly killed by union troops?
Orlowek: In 1919, the granddaughter of one of the soldiers
who was at the barn
gave a sworn affidavit
saying that man was not john wilkes booth
who was killed in the barn.
That man had red hair and ruddy features.
John wilkes booth had black hair
and smooth features.
Ebner: If revisionist history
is to be believed, john wilkes booth
was given a password to freedom
and this was done by the original conspirator
in abraham lincoln's death,
supposedly...
Vice president andrew johnson.
Young: John st. Helen is apparently
on his deathbed and he made kind of a deathbed confession.
He tells the whole story
of how it was plotted not by himself,
but by the vice president, andrew johnson,
who was, of course, the beneficiary,
became president because of the death.
Shatner: Is it possible john wilkes booth
lived as john st. Helen
before dying as david george in 1903,
only to be reborn as a mummified curiosity?
While this may seem like a far-fetched notion,
according to researchers, we may never know
what really happened,
because authorities are preventing anyone
from finding out the truth.
In the 1990s, the booth family was
convinced that john wilkes booth really got away
and they agreed to authorize the excavation of the body.
There are all sorts of tests that would compare it
with dna from anyone of john wilkes booth's
immediate family members.
Unfortunately, the cemetery fought it
and the booth family was denied permission.
Shatner: Now you might be thinking,
if officials at the cemetery are preventing booth's grave
from being exhumed,
why not simply do a dna test on his supposed mummy?
Not surprisingly, researchers agree that a dna test
would solve the mystery,
if only they knew where to find the mummy.
Orlowek: So unfortunately, it's uncertain where it is.
So unless we can either find the mummy
or dig up the body in the booth plot,
this will forever be a mystery.
Does john wilkes booth really lie buried
in a baltimore cemetery?
Or did he somehow escape death at the hands of union soldiers
and his mummified remains are out there somewhere,
collecting dust in someone's attic?
Either way, it seems that mummies do, in a sense,
keep the memory of the dead alive.
But there are some mummies whose place in history
is preserved, not just in our minds,
but right before our eyes.
Shatner: Near the center of this ancient city
rise the soaring twin spires of the cologne cathedral.
Every day, more than 20,000 people
flock through its arched doors
to visit one of catholicism's most important sites,
the tomb of the three kings.
Those who pray at this ancient shrine
believe that they will be divinely favored,
because it contains the bones of the three biblical wise men
who visited jesus shortly after his birth,
and whom the catholic church considers to be saints.
Jeremiah: After death, a lot of the so-called
saints in catholic christianity,
their body parts were distributed.
And the reason for that was
there was this idea that they were a source
of divine power
that could affect people, that could affect miracles.
Shatner: For the faithful, being in the presence
of even a tiny portion of a holy figure's body
is a powerful reminder of god's promise
of eternal life in heaven.
So imagine how they must feel when in the presence
of not merely the body parts of a saint,
but the entire body of one,
like in the case of the remains of st. Bernadette of lourdes,
which lie perfectly preserved in a chapel in France,
more than a century after her death.
St. Bernadette was born in France in 1844,
and she saw an apparition of the virgin mary 18 times.
And it started when she was 14.
The spring that st. Bernadette saw the virgin mary in
is now a point of healing for many people,
and many people go to lourdes just to obtain the water.
Jeremiah: St. Bernadette ended up dying
in 1879 of tuberculosis
and the church decided
that her claim that she visited with the virgin mary
in lourdes, France was trustworthy
and decided to make her a saint.
And as such, they had to remove her body from the current tomb,
identify it, and then relocate it
closer to the church.
And when they were doing that,
they found out that she was in a perfect state of preservation.
She looked as though she was still alive.
Shatner: To this day, st. Bernadette
appears as youthful in death as she did in life.
Could it be possible that st. Bernadette's lack of decay
is actually the result of divine intervention?
An incorruptible saint
symbolizes that god has blessed that particular saintly person
so that their body that so many people have loved in life
is still recognizable and becomes a focus for devotion.
Shatner: Despite the symbolic miracle
such incorruptible bodies represent
for the faithful, according to many researchers,
there's nothing miraculous about them.
Jeremiah: A lot of the so-called incorruptibles
were blatantly mummified.
St. Bernadette was enclosed in two
hermetically sealed caskets.
Once exposed to air, she started to decay,
so they covered her face and hands with wax.
Shatner: To the millions of faithful who visit the small chapel
where st. Bernadette's body now lies,
her uncanny appearance remains proof of the power of faith.
Unlike another incorruptible mummy
which many consider to be evidence
of a much different power,
the power of the state.
More than one million mourners stand for hours
in below-freezing temperatures
to pay their final respects to vladimir lenin,
the bolshevik leader who ushered in the communist revolution.
Alexei yurchak: When lenin died in 1924,
he was associated in the minds of millions of people--
not everyone, but the majority--
with a radical transformation of human history.
Lenin and, uh, especially his family,
wanted him to be buried,
but stalin decided to create a symbolism
of an utopia that was created.
So the idea was to keep him preserved
for future generations.
Shatner: According to reports, soviet scientists devised
an entirely new method for creating lenin's mummy,
one intended to preserve his body for eternity,
as though he were frozen in time.
It had to be the exact likeness of lenin.
It also had to feel like lenin.
The so-called presence had to be there.
Shatner: Almost 100 years later,
lenin's mummy still remains on display in his mausoleum
near red square in moscow,
and it appears as though his body hasn't decayed
in the slightest.
Every few months, they give him a recharge, you know,
they hydrate him a little bit.
They put fake eyelashes on him.
As the art of mummification advances, so, too, does lenin.
He's looking better every year.
Stonehill: For many people,
it was more than just a mere body that was being preserved,
it was the spirit of the era.
And stalin was gone,
khrushchev was gone, but lenin was always there.
Is it really possible for a dead body
to remain perfectly preserved,
untouched by decay, ageless for all eternity?
In any case, the very public fate of some corpses
reminds us that, regardless of what arrangements we make,
the fate of our remains is no longer ours to control.
There's even a chance we could end up becoming
unwitting participants in someone's bizarre attempt
to bring us back to life.
Shatner: Police investigating a series of grave desecrations
trace them back to the home of local history professor
anatoly moskvin, where they make a gruesome discovery.
A collection of eerie, life-sized dolls
that upon closer examination turn out to be
the mummified remains of young girls.
Moskvin was a very intelligent person
who had phenomenal memory, who could speak 13 languages.
His colleagues said he was mild-mannered,
kind and loved cemeteries and anything related to death.
He was commissioned, at some point,
to research, uh, cemeteries
in a very large area of nizhny novgorod,
when he started digging up the graves of young girls.
Ebner: His poor parents,
they thought he was a little craftsman
sewing together these little dolls.
They honestly had no idea
what was going on behind the closed door of this guy's room.
Hickey: He spent some serious time
in mummification of these corpses.
To preserve them, he used fragrances
to make them smell better.
He clothed them.
He inserted things inside them so they wouldn't shrink.
And he took very good care of them.
Shatner: All in all, moskvin collected the bodies
of 29 young girls,
earning him the nickname "lord of the mummies."
but when authorities asked moskvin
why he assembled his ghoulish collection,
his motive was more disturbing than they ever imagined.
Moskvin was a firm believer that he actually was able
to speak to the dead and that the dead
were able to speak back.
Picknett: He claimed that he only ever dug them up
when they'd given him permission to do so, in some spiritual way.
And some of them were crying out, he said, to be rescued.
Ebner: So at one point, he said to himself,
"well, it's cold out here in these cemeteries.
"why don't I take these kids home
and they can keep me company in the comfort of my own home?"
he actually treated them like they were living human beings.
Uh, he would have parties for them.
He had birthday parties.
He watched television with them.
He talked to them.
He interacted with them like they were alive.
And to anybody else, that would be crazy, but to him,
it made perfect sense.
(bell tolls)
so moskvin has indicated
if he's ever released from prison,
he's going to go back to those specific corpses
and dig them up again, because he truly believes
that these girls can be brought back to life.
Shatner: Anatoly moskvin's belief
that he can bring dead people back to life
certainly seems like a misguided fantasy.
But on the other hand, who knows what might happen in the future?
What if scientific breakthroughs actually make it possible
for us to resurrect dead bodies that have been preserved?
So, you don't believe in miracles,
uh, but what you can, uh, hope for
is a scientific breakthrough, a scientific miracle.
Like, the idea of cryogenics.
You can freeze yourself and maybe someday
science will be able to get you back alive.
Picknett: A lot of people have had the idea
that one day advanced science can reanimate them.
But that presupposes many things.
It presupposes that there isn't an afterlife
that you don't automatically go to.
Or they could bring you back, but you could have lost
everything that made you you.
So it's the idea of-of preserving the body
for reanimation through science.
It still gets us right back to that elemental question
that so many people have:
If there is a soul, if there is an afterlife,
what is the relationship between that soul
and the physical body?
If the body is still somehow connected to the soul,
maybe someday science will be able to save all of us.
Shatner: Could new technology offer us the ability
to revive our bodies after we die?
It's a fascinating notion.
One that raises an even more profound question:
If science can bring a recently mummified body
back from the dead,
might there also be a way for modern technology
to bring ancient mummies back to life as well?
Shatner: Scientists publish the results of an extraordinary study.
By ct-scanning the mummy of an ancient egyptian priest
known as nesyamun, and using this information
to recreate his vocal tract using a 3d printer,
the scientists were able to engineer an approximation
of the dead priest's voice
which hadn't been heard for 3,000 years.
(low groaning)
michio kaku: "hear dead people speak."
that was the headline.
Because it was such an interesting concept,
using modern technology to understand
what the person may have sounded like.
(low groaning)
as a priest of amun, nesyamun was responsible
for guiding the mummy from the realm of the living
into the realm of the dead.
(low groaning)
and the very fact that his voice seems to echo
through the centuries perhaps is proof
of the egyptian belief
that the soul remains connected to the body
for eternity through the afterlife.
Shatner: Thus far, the team working to restore nesyamun's voice
has only managed to reproduce a single sound.
(low groaning)
in time, it is believed they may be able
to make him speak words, or even entire sentences.
And if some researchers are correct,
scientists may even soon be able to recreate
his entire body.
Steavu: We could technically
extract dna from a mummy and then clone it,
and reanimate the deceased person.
So we could grow king tut once more.
Shatner: Regrow king tut?
While the possibility of reviving 3,000-year-old mummies
may in fact be within our reach,
there are those who believe that just because we can
doesn't necessarily mean we should.
The ancient egyptians, it was really important for them
to have a peaceful, uh, burial and existence.
So they might perceive these scientific investigations
to try to clone a mummy or try to recreate a mummy's voice
as perhaps invasive, uh,
to their actual religious afterlife beliefs.
Jeremiah: We have two major mysteries in life,
and one is the nature of life itself, the other is death.
And mummified bodies serve kind of as a conduit between the two.
And the truth is maybe they still are influencing reality.
So, uh, what do you think?
Would you like to try getting yourself mummified
after you die, and then be brought back to life?
It's a tantalizing concept.
But then again, maybe we should heed
the lesson of king tut's tomb, and remember
that it might be better to let mummies rest in peace,
leaving the question of whether they will ever rise again
to remain, at least for now... Unexplained.
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