Woman busted trying to mail a mummy to France

Police in La Paz, Bolivia, arrested a woman who tried to mail what appears to be a pre-Columbian mummy to France through the regular post office. She would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling routine postal inspections.

The Bolivian national told police that she gotten the package in Desaguadero, a town about 40 miles west of La Paz near the border with Peru, from a man she calls Don Gustavo. She claimed not to know what was inside the box. Don Gustavo just instructed her to mail it from the post office in La Paz to one Annette Huc in Compiegne, France, and that’s what she did.

The Police said that a preliminary inspection of the mummy indicated that it probably corresponds to a child and seems to be in good state of conservation.

Ronald Terán, Head of Bolivia’s Cultural Heritage Study Society, said the case is being reviewed and investigated and that a report will be issued soon. The antiquity of the mummy has not yet been determined, but it may date about 750 years and pertain to the Inca culture.

You can see footage of the mummy, the alleged mummy mule and the wee tiny post office where it all went down in this ITV report:

7 thoughts on “Woman busted trying to mail a mummy to France

  1. I work for a university police department…and someone mailed us some pre-Columbian skulls this week! Totally bizarre…what’s going on?

  2. The cool thing about Andean mummies is that they’re 100% all natural with no added flavors or preservatives. The cool dry air dessicates the corpse, preventing the bacteria responsible for decomposition from multiplying. Other natural mummies have occurred in the bogs of Northern Europe* and the crypt of a Sicilian (IIRC) monastery.

    *The tannic acid in the bog does leave the mummy somewhat gooey and distorted however.

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