Otzi's curse
They started talking about this find after September 1991. It was then that the German archaeologist Helmut Simon and his wife Erica discovered the mummy of a man in the Alpine ice, whose age was determined to be 5300 years. She was named Otzi after the name of the local town.
And although more than five millennia have passed since this ancient man died, his body, thanks to the ice "tomb", has been surprisingly well preserved. As a result of careful research carried out already in laboratory conditions, the following interesting facts about the mummy were established.
During his lifetime, Otzi's height barely reached 158 centimeters, and his weight was about 50 kilograms. He was dressed in a shirt of multi-colored leather stripes, and on his belt was a wide loincloth.
Otzi's head was adorned with a fur hat, and his shoulders were covered with a straw cape. His shoes had a rather original design: the soles were made of bearskin, the upper was made of deerskin, and the inside was insulated with dry grass.
To survive in the harsh conditions of the Alpine mountains, Otzi also had several important items. So, in a leather pocket, which was attached to a belt, archaeologists found a bone awl, as well as dry moss and a piece of pyrite, with the help of which the ancient people made fire. In addition, there was also a scraper, an awl and a razor-sharp knife. All of these products were made from silicon.
I had with me the "ice man" and a first-aid kit with birch chaga - an antiseptic mushroom, as well as two mushrooms with antibiotic properties.
Next to Otzi's corpse was a quiver with arrows, as well as an ax, the blade of which was made of copper.
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Scientists have counted 57 tattoos on the hands and back of the mummy, as well as many injection marks. On this basis, the researchers suggested that the deceased was most likely a shaman.
A thorough examination showed that Otzi's clothes, ax, dagger and arrows had traces of blood that belonged to eight different people. This indicated that the ancient man participated in several serious fights. At the same time, as shown by fluoroscopy, he was killed by an arrow that hit him in the back.
But not only the presence of numerous tattoos was the reason for declaring Otzi a shaman. There were other reasons for this.
“This Otzi could have been a sorcerer,” said archaeologist Alessandro Morandi after a thorough examination of his items. - The first analysis of his things showed that they are from different time periods. The arrows are 7000 years old, the ax was worked 2000 years ago, at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, and the skin in which the man was wrapped was ripped from a goat that lived 5000 years ago … in China. We can assume that Otzi was an ancient priest of some unknown cult and had supernatural powers, including the ability to travel in time! Perhaps, even during his lifetime, a special spell was imposed on him. Such rituals existed among the ancient druids: a person underwent the "death ceremony" - a special mystical procedure that promised terrible punishment to anyone who disturbed the peace of his body in the future …
And, as it soon became clear, the spirit of Otzi really began to take revenge on those who disturbed his peace. The first victim of the "ice man" was 64-year-old professor Gunther Henn. This scientist has been in contact with the mummy for the longest time, as he carried out its examination. And Henn died in 1993 in a car accident while driving to a scientific conference dedicated to Otzi.
The next in the chain of deaths was 52-year-old climber Kurt Fritz, who helped transport the remains of the famous mummy by helicopter from the mountains to the valley. And the life of an experienced climber was cut short by an avalanche that overtook him in an area that was as familiar to him as his own apartment. At the same time, nothing serious happened with the climbers who were in the same bundle with Kurt.
In the summer of 2004, in the prime of his life, German journalist Rainer Holz died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He also spent a lot of time next to the ominous mummy: he captured the extraction of Otzi from the ice grave, and then made a documentary about him.
And after Holz, the "discoverer" of the mummy, Helmut Simon, went to another world. It happened in October 2004, right after the archaeologist won the court, according to which he was owed a reward of $ 150,000 for finding the "ice man."
Delighted with such a court decision, 67-year-old Helmut suddenly decided to go to the very place where he found Otzi's mummy. However, on the way, he got into a snow hurricane that suddenly hit the slopes of the Ötztal ridge. When, eight days later, rescuers reached his dead body, they found that he was lying in the same position in which Otzi had been found by him.
And just a few days after the funeral of Helmut Simon, a member of the Otzi evacuation expedition, 45-year-old Dieter Varnecke, went to the forefathers. He died from a massive heart attack, although, according to family members of the deceased, he had never complained of heart before.
Konrad Spindler, who led a group of scientists at the University of Innsbruck, who studied Otzi, became the sixth victim of his curse. The scientist died in April 2005 at the age of 66 from a stroke.
The famous Australian anthropologist Tom Loy, who studied the things and DNA of the Tyrolean mummy, did not protect himself from the curse of the alpine shaman. The life of the 63-year-old scientist ended in early November 2005. However, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that Loy was already a sick person. True, doctors discovered this disease after Otzi's research.
However, it must be said that many of those who had to come into contact with the Tyrolean mummy are still alive and well. For example, the curse of Otzi Maria Anna Pabst, who studied tattoos on the body of the "ice man", did not touch.
Probably, Otzi and brothers Alphonse and Adri Kennis are not afraid, who, using computed tomography at the end of February 2011, restored his exact appearance.