College Library’s Mummy
to Get Free Repairs
An Egyptian mummy on display in the library at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, will get repairs worth over $30,000 for free from a graduate fine-art conservation program jointly offered by the University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. In exchange, Holy Cross will let them display the restored mummy for two years before it is returned.
The 2,000-year-old mummy—that of a little girl wrapped in brown linen, covered in beads, and enclosed in a wooden coffin—was encased in glass in the library but had still deteriorated from temperature and humidity changes, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported April 9. “We didn’t do anything to it, but on the other hand, we didn’t do anything for it,” said James Hogan, director of the school’s Dinand Library.
The college would have needed to hold a major fundraiser to pay for the necessary repairs, Hogan said.
The mummy was donated to the college in 1896 by alumnus Peter Skelly, who received it from a friend who was a museum official in Egypt.
Posted April 17, 2000.
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