Have you ever seen a mummy in person? (Clare, 12)

I am lucky enough to have seen quite a few mummies, although I have never dug one myself. I have of course seen some Egyptian mummies in different museums, but my favourite mummies are all in Ireland! First, there are the bog bodies in the National Museum. Those are mummies that were preserved in peat bogs and date back to the Iron Age. These people may have been sacrificed and deliberately buried in bogs. You can find out more about these on the National Museum’s website (please note this webpage includes some photos of human remains).

I also wanted to mention the mummies of Saint Michan’s Church. One of the most famous mummies there was that of a crusader and was about 800 years old! Unfortunately the crypt was vandalised a few years ago and the mummies were damaged so it is not possible to visit them anymore.

But then my favourite mummies are located in Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin: they are the mummies of a cat chasing a rat. They both got stuck in one of the organ’s pipes and as the pipe became narrower, they couldn’t turn back! They were discovered in the 1850s, when the organ was renovated. I’ve included a picture that I took when I was last in Dublin.

Odile, September 2026