At left is one of the “modern day” mummies exhumed somewhere between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries in a cemetery in Guanajuato, Mexico. The bodies were exhumed by officials after families of the deceased failed to pay for the maintenance of the cemetery. The naturally mummified bodies were then placed on display in a local museum where they remain today. The arid conditions caused the corpses to slowly dessicate and thereby become immune to further decomposition. While this natural process left much of the flesh and visceral elements of these mummies intact, their facial features lack any specific gender. Death then completes the process which old age largely accomplishes: the final release of the human spirit from its worldly vessel which no longer serves any purpose, especially that of sexual reproduction.
