Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLOS: Eso-Eris, the Wandering Mummy

Sadly, politics always interfere with academic or cultural decisions and in 1985, when democracy was restored in the country, steps were taken by the original custodians of the mummy to take it back there, which was approved by the new government shortly after. A few years ago, a big and modem History of Art Museum belonging to the Municipality of Montevideo, where the largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in Uruguay can be found, was refurbished and reopened to the public. In order to secure for our only ancient Egyptian mummy a more adequate location with a better controlled environment, a long bureaucratic procedure was started to arrange for its exhibition in this new museum on indefinite loan from the Natural History Museum, which was at the time temporarily closed down while it was moved elsewhere. After much resistance from the latter, whose officials felt that they had acquired over the years a right of ownership of this mummy, which was also their greatest public attraction, due to a number of circumstances the transfer was finally approved on loan for a few years and the short trip of about a mile from one museum to the other took place in 1999. Eso-Eris was carried on foot by a group of volunteers supervised by museum officials and as the news of the procession spread, a crowd accompanied our priestess in her trip to her new home. It is the hope of the writer and of many of his local colleagues, that the wanderings of this venerable lady have come to an end and that she will be allowed to settle down permanently in the History of Art Museum, which has provided a controlled environment to ensure its adequate conservation and where she is surrounded by objects that if she could perceive them, would be very familiar to her, and where the public and local students can see her integrated to a background to which she definitely belongs. Juan José Castillos Institute Uruguayo de Egyptolgia Montevideo