“She may be 4,000 years old, but that hasn’t stopped her from causing trouble between the US and China. A museum in Philadelphia has been told it cannot display the ‘Beauty of Xiaohe’, a nearly-perfect preserved mummy from far western China with hair and eye lashes still intact, along with a host of other historical artefacts. The museum announced on Wednesday that it was stripping the ‘Secrets of the Silk Road’ display of all objects that was due to open today at the request of Chinese officials. No reason has been given for why the exhibition has suddenly been halted after four months travelling around the US but there was speculation that it may be linked to the mummy’s Western appearance and Chinese sensitivities about what that implied for the region’s history. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology declined to say which officials they were and the Chinese consulate was unavailable for comment because of the Chinese New Year holiday. The Beauty of Xiaohe was the centre-piece of the exhibition along with a well-preserved mummy of a baby, along with vibrantly coloured burial trappings of a third mummy. The artefacts come from the Tarim Basin in the autonomous Xinjiang Uyghur region of China and are of particular interest because of their Caucasian features. This proves that people migrated east from Europe, taking their customs and skills with them.” w/ photos
