Before they wrap it up next week, we give you a reason to catch Mumbai’s only preserved mummy on display at CSMVS’s heritage wing
A school student attends the exhibition with her teachers
A massive installation of the sleeping Buddha greets us as we enter Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS). He has a teasing smile on his lips, as if to tell us, “It is still early here.” After all, we are one of the first visitors when we arrive at the museum at 10.30 am on a Monday.
As we step into the imposing Indo-Saracenic building, we are greeted by soft golden lights that play hide-and-seek between the pillars that hold up the wooden pavilion. Right in the middle of the Circle Gallery is a small passageway that seems to be attracting more visitors than usual at this early hour. They are all headed to view the Egyptian mummy, wrapped in bandages and in layers of history that emerge from its worn-out linen cartonnage.
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The exhibition, Mummy: An Unsolved Mystery, is where Mumbai’s only mummy has been on display since November 2022, and only a few days remain before the exhibition ends. Believed to be over 2,000-years-old, this ancient Egyptian marvel has been with the museum since its inception. Aparna Bhogal, curator of the archaeological section, calls it the ‘OG’ at CSMVS, “The Mummy has been here with us since colonisation. The British brought it here, and it has had many visitors from the city since 1922, when the museum first opened to the public.”
Shabtis, small figurines of servants kept as part of the display
The mummy is stationed in the middle of a whitewashed room with Egyptian figures painted on its walls. The open lid of the coffin hovers over it in an air-tight glass box. We enter the space with strains of soft, ominous instrumental music playing in the background. A young child walks in with her mother and looks at the exhibit. She touches the glass that secures the mummy, and instantly hides behind her mother.
“Many tourists and students drop by to see the mummy they saw from a horror movie,” Bhogal laughs. But these scary movies have never bothered Bhogal, because she believes that under the spooky, deteriorating layers lies a body of a teenager — probably a girl. “Even after all these years, we can’t tell for sure who is inside this mummy. We don’t have the facilities to scan the mummy in the city, and we cannot mess with the embalming done by the Egyptians by opening it up. It is too risky,” she reveals to us.
The exhibition will continue till April 30, after which the room will make way for other exhibitions. The coffin will be closed, and the mummy will be placed in a safe storage facility in the museum. While the museum is undecided when the mummy display will return for public viewing, Bhogal promises that it won’t be a long wait.
Till: April 30
At: Heritage Wing, CSMVS, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort.
Cost: Rs 150 (museum entry fee)
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