Photo Hunters: Wrinkled

Today’s theme is to find something wrinkled. I have just the thing today! Look– it’s a real cat mummy! We saw this when we visited the Museum of Oddities in Cazenovia. The founder of the museum, back in the 1800s, had traveled to Egypt to obtain artifacts and mummies for the collection. This kitty is definitely wrinkled, I’d say! So are the flaxen bandages that wrap it.

Recently, Anna at Chica & Pumuckl had blogged about Bastet cats, so that post reminded me that I had a photo of a real Bastet! And Luxor the White Cat, when he had seen this photo at my post about the museum, exclaimed that here on my blog he had found his ancient ancestors! It’s nice to know I am such a great match-maker, lol.

You can read more about the Egyptian mummy and her pet cat here. Scientists did all sorts of tests on the mummy, and determined that she died of mesothelioma or some kind of tumor or something. They even took x-rays of the mummy!

How did your Photo Hunt go today?

Egyptian Mummy at Cazenovia Library

In the first post about our visit to the Museum of Oddities at the Cazenovia Library, I talked about the architecture of the Greek Revival building, and of the really weird things we discovered in its little museum. By far, the weirdest thing we saw was the Egyptian mummy. And its mummified cat.

The mummy was obtained by library patrician Robert J Hubbard, who traveled to Egypt in 1894. He came back with a variety of strange and ancient artifacts specifically for this museum. The mummy is called the Cazenovia Mummy and is believed to be 2110 years old (the person who is now mummified is determined to have lived about 104 B.C.).

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Museum of Oddities at Cazenovia Library

The kids and I have been to dozens and dozens of libraries in New York State. It was a real treat to visit the Cazenovia Library in Cazenovia, NY, and see their Museum of Oddities. It’s a place with more than just books; there’s a micro-museum packed into three rooms of the oldest section of the library, but it was quite an adventure! There’s a mummy in this library! First, a little history (of course!).

Cazenovia Library was founded about 165 years ago. It’s a beautiful Greek Revival building. I love this style of architecture.

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