Excavation of the Ukok Princess in 1983 and the dispute over reburial of the mummy

Why do I say alas? Because one truly wishes that the touching devotion of the people of Altai to their native mummies might be rewarded.

The Ukok Princess was excavated in 1983, and her body was remarkably well preserved for its age of 2,500 years. All thanks to the fact that the burial chamber had been literally frozen into the base of the barrow, on top of which, incidentally, lay a later grave.

The 25-year-old woman with tattoos lay on her side, her clothing and hair well preserved. Six horses with their harness were buried with her. It turned out that she had died of breast cancer.

They say the barrow was plundered several times, but the robbers simply never reached such a depth, and this time it was the state that was digging: the Ministry of Defence was building nearby, the Chinese border being what it is. The burial chamber was filled with ice, and it took a long time to thaw. The mummy is kept to this day in a special refrigerated case.

The conflict over the removal of the sacred relic, as spiritual and community leaders have come to call it, arose already in the post-Soviet years. In Altai there is a view, quite a just one in my opinion, that the mummy ought to be buried anew. I do not share the belief that cataclysms occur because of her unquiet rest; I simply consider that the dead have rights too, even if they cannot speak of them. Yet all manner of political campaigns are periodically hitched to the struggle for the Ukok Princess, which spoils the whole undertaking.

Genetic studies have shown the princess to be related to certain modern peoples of Altai. All the more reason for them to fight with redoubled vigour. The ethnographers, however, say that the girl was no princess at all, but an ordinary member of the middle class: after all, only six horses...

But the most vexing thing in this story is that everyone has forgotten how, in the 1930s and 1940s, other mummies were carried away from Altai. Moreover, those of far nobler persons, with treasures that were much more valuable