A mummy was found in a man’s cooler bag in Peru when police stopped and searched him for drinking alcohol at a cultural site.
The body is between 600 and 800 years old and was a man aged over 45 who was about 1.51m (4ft 11in) tall, according to experts consulted by Peru‘s Ministry of Culture as reported by news agency EFE.
According to local media reports, police officers discovered the body wrapped in bandages in a cooler bag of a man they had approached for consuming alcohol at a viewpoint in Puno.
Photos released by the culture ministry show a skeleton in the fetal position, lying in a red bag that bears the logo of Pedidos Ya, a popular takeaway company.
The man said the body, who he called “Juanita”, belonged to him.
“It sleeps in my bedroom, with me. There’s my bed, the TV set and next to it, there’s Juanita. I take care of it,” he told one media outlet.
“It’s like, if you’ll pardon the expression, as if it were my spiritual girlfriend.”
However, the mummy was a man and not a woman as the man originally thought, experts confirmed.
“It’s not a Juanita, it’s a Juan,” CNN quoted a specialist at the culture ministry as saying.
The culture ministry said it had taken possession of the mummified remains “with the aim of protecting and preserving this heritage”, according to CNN.
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The man claimed the body had been with his family for 30 years after plans to donate it to a museum failed.
He and the two friends he was with at the time of the discovery have been detained.
Mummification was practiced by numerous cultures in what is now Peru, beginning more than 7,000 years ago.
Some people kept mummies in their homes or brought them to festivals while others were buried.
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In 2021, a mummy estimated to be 800 years old was discovered on Peru’s central coast.
The mummy’s body was tied up by ropes and the hands were covering the face, which experts said would be part of the local funeral pattern in Peru.
