2,500 Year Old Bad Bitch Wreaks Havoc and Vengeance
The Altai Mountains — a range where Russia meets China meets Mongolia meets Kazakhstan — have recently been besieged by floods and earthquakes, and they have only themselves (and when I say “themselves” I mean archeologists that had very little to do with them) to blame. Why? They dug up the wrong HBIC.
The tattooed corpse of the 25-year-old woman was preserved in permafrost until she was dug up more than two decades ago. It was this act, it is claimed, that has caused her anger.
Twenty-one years ago, archeologist Natalia Polosmak dug up the mummified remains of the woman who would come to be known as “Princess Ukok,” after the remote area where she was discovered. Now the flooding in the region is “the worst in 50 years” and a series of earthquakes have shaken the Council of Elders in Altai into putting the Princess back where they found her. But why was moving this particular mummy such a big deal?
Local peoples from the Altai Republic, which borders Kazakhstan and Mongolia, say the presence of the mummy — also known as Ooch-Bala — in the burial chamber was ‘to bar the entrance to the kingdom of the dead’.
By removing the permafrost corpse the elders contend that ‘the entrance remains open’.
So, a hellmouth is open. No one panic. Fortunately she has her defenders, who have written the best heartfelt burial plea ever to sound like a Kate Bush song.
A statement stressed: ‘Who puts the naked corpse of their mother on public display? She knocks into our heart, seeking compassion. She is cold from evil indifference.’
But MOST importantly (at least to someone who is concerned about what’s next), Princess Ukok/ Ooch-Bala must have had a pretty good last 2,500 years, because she had the coolest afterlife set up I’ve ever heard of. If there were an MTV’s Cribs for burial sites, her episode would be an instant classic:
Buried around the body were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, possibly as a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman.
In the elaborate grave was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold. Some accounts, also suggest she was found with a small container of cannabis, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.
(Confidential to my friend Kelly, please add all of this to your Gmail folder marked “executor of Meredith’s will.”)
And is that all? NO. Besides being all done up with “the most complicated, and the most beautiful” tattoos in the ancient world, she was also camera ready.
The scientists who found Princess Ukok also discovered that she had a shaved head and wore a [wig], along with an elaborate headdress.
Buried with her was a face brush made from horse hair, and a fragment of an ‘eyeliner pencil’.
Going out in true Dolly Parton style. Respect.
Anyways, natural disasters and gaping open portals to the netherworld are what happen when you disturb a strong woman’s eternal rest. So, lesson learned?
A ban has been imposed on further archeological digs in other burial mounds in the remote area where her remains were found.
Yup.
