700 Year Old Mummy Found in China

Archaeologists have discovered a well-preserved, 700-year-old body of a woman inside a stone coffin in China.The coffin was found on a building site in Taizhou, in eastern China's Jiangsu Province.The woman, discovered two meters below the surface in a wooden tomb, was wearing a  Ming Dynasty dress and is thought to have been at a high-ranking level.The mummy was found by road workers, and had been preserved in a brown liquid.

Her body, which measures 1.5 meters high, was found at the construction site immersed in a brown liquid inside the coffin.The mummy was wearing traditional Ming dynasty costume, and also in the coffin were bones, ceramics, ancient writings and other relics.

This is the latest discovery after a lull of three years in the area. Indeed, between 1979 and 2008 five mummies were found, all in very good condition.Those findings raised the interest in learning the techniques to better understand the Ming dynasty's expertise in mummifying as well as their funeral rituals and customs.the mummy's clothes are made mostly of silk, with a little cotton witch usually are very hard to preserve and excavations found that this mummifying technology was used only at very high-profile funerals.

The first finding of the Ming Dynasty in Taizhou dates from May 1979.At that time the bodies were also found intact, but due to lack of experience of archaeologists only clothing, belts and clamps could be preserved.The Ming Dynasty, who built the Forbidden City and restored the Great Wall, was the last in China and marked an era of economic growth and cultural splendour which produced the first commercial contacts with the West.