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He found himself surrounded by mummies, maybe half a dozen At that point, though, he was still a “Chinese language and
in all. Not the usual sort of mummies, wrapped in rotting gauze literature guy with a lot of experience about central Asia,”
or looking like something out of a zombie movie. These were albeit one who was “curious about everything.” And the discovery
of Ötzi “galvanized” him.
astonishingly well-preserved people of decidedly un-Chinese
appearance, dressed in their everyday clothes. Though their “What really goaded me to go to the mummies was that [Ötzi]
remains were identified as thousands of years old, they looked as had an army of researchers working on him,” he adds. “It wasn’t
though they were sleeping and could wake up at any moment. fair. Those Xinjiang mummies—nobody was working on them;
Mair was stunned—and skeptical.
nobody even knew about them. I said to myself, ‘They’re every
“I looked at the mummies and said, ‘Oh, this is a hoax,’” he bit as important as he is. Maybe even more important.’ They’re
says. “They looked like something out of Madame Tussauds in the center of Asia, at the crossroads of Asia. Before that it
Wax Museum—they’re too well preserved. Then all the clothing
was so immaculate, so pristine, and the colors were very den there were all these Caucasian people with all this advanced
was just a big lacuna in that part of the world; then all of a sud-
vivid and bright. And perfectly intact! Nothing destroyed.” technology, right up there against China—very early.”
Mair had examined enough ancient manuscripts from the He pauses for just a moment, and adds: “That very afternoon,
area to know that the salty sands and freeze-drying climate of I became an archaeologist.”
the Tarim Basin, where the mummies were found, are highly
conducive to preservation. (“The most linguistically diverse Richard Hodges, the Williams Director of the Penn
library in the ancient world has survived in the drying sands
Museum and an eminent archaeologist in his own
of the Tarim Basin,” he and co-author James Mallory wrote in
right, is talking with easy precision about the “two
their 2000 book, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the
great issues” in world archaeology today.
Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West.) But their One, he explains, is “that whole issue of man coming out of
remarkable condition wasn’t the only
Africa, particularly sub-Sahara Africa,
puzzling thing about these mummies.
and crossing into the Middle East, then
“They had all this advanced technology:
bronze, and high-level textile tech-
That’s a sort of prelude to the second
moving eastwards and northwards.”
nology, different kinds of tools—they
issue—which, he says, involves “what
had wheels, for example. Everything
was happening between Asia and
made me think this was too advanced
Europe and the Middle East and this
for this time in this place.”
crucible of the Old World” over the past
Even more brain-scrambling was the
three millennia.
fact that they looked so … European. Their
“The Tarim Basin is smack-bang in
height (tall). Hair (blond, reddish-brown,
the middle of this crucible,” Hodges
fine-textured). Facial structure. Clothing.
says forcefully. “And the archaeology
Mair was especially drawn to one
that’s come from it, the new finds that
mummy whose remains were identified
have been made in that region, are
as dating back to 1000 BCE. Chärchän
extraordinary.” The result is “a remarkable
chance to get to grips with those
Man, excavated from Chärchän (Qiemo The salty sands and freeze-drying climate of
in Modern Standard Mandarin), was sixfoot-seven,
with longish blond-brown found, are highly conducive to preservation. ested archaeologists for centuries on a
the Tarim Basin, where the mummies were extraordinary issues that have inter-
hair and beard, and his clothing included
a reddish-purple woolen shirt trimmed with red piping. because they were myopic,” Hodges adds. “And now this big,
big scale”—until they “lost interest
Mair promptly dubbed him Ur-David, on account of the grand narrative is back for us.”
remarkable resemblance to his very-much-alive brother Dave. The narrative takes physical form in Secrets of the Silk
But beyond that eerie resemblance bubbled a serious question:
What in God’s name was a tall, fair-haired man with that that opens at the Penn Museum February 5 and runs through
Road, an exhibition of Tarim Basin mummies and artifacts
kind of clothing doing in east-central Asia 3,000 years ago? June 5. The exhibition is “fantastic,” says Hodges, “because
Mair sent his tour members back to the hotel, and spent the it really demands that you have the kind of imagination to
next few hours in that dark room, meditating on the implications
of its inhabitants. He filed the mental images away and we are and where we came from.”
look across huge distances and ask big questions about who
went back to studying manuscripts.
For Mair, the fact that an exhibition of Tarim mummies and
Three years later, he found himself reading a story in The artifacts is coming to the Penn Museum at all borders on the
New York Times about a frozen 5,300-year-old body that had “miraculous.” Not just because it’s a blockbuster show with dazzling
objects and a raft of innovative special programs that rep-
just been discovered in the Ötztaler Alps on the border between
Austria and Italy. Ötzi the Iceman, as he became known, “died resents a quantum leap forward for the Museum, though it is and
at the top of the Similaun Glacier, right near where my father it does. (See sidebar on p. 44.) It’s also that he had long since given
pastured his animals when he was a boy,” says Mair. The weird up hope that any of those mummies and artifacts would ever
convergence of time and place and professional interests make it out of China, let alone to West Philadelphia.
prompts a grin. “I was born to be a mummy guy,” he says.
Fifteen years ago, he was turned down for a similar show, on
42 JAN | FEB 2011 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE
PENN MUSEUM