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A rare Photo of The Fire Mummie/Ibaloi mummy -The National Museum of the Philippines recently returned the mummified and intricately tattooed body of Apo Annu, a tribal leader in the Benguet province (140 miles north of Manila) who died 500 years ago. His body had been stolen from a burial cave near the town of Natubling in the between 1918 and 1920. Museum curator Orlando Abinion said the mummy was stolen by a Christian pastor between 1918 and 1920 and wound up as part of a sideshow in a Manila circus; the mummy changed hands a number of times until 1984, when an antiques collector donated it to the National Museum. According to Reuters, Apo Annu was "heavily tattooed-the mark of hunters and warriors...and is covered with dried flesh, brownish in color. In a sitting position with arms held up to his face, Apo Annu looks like a man praying to the heavens." He was dressed in the clothes of a tribal chief before he was placed just in a wooden coffin inside his burial cave.
© Gunther Deichmann
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