Police seize 800-year-old mummified human from a man who claimed it was his ‘girlfriend’ and even slept with it in his bed
Peruvian authorities have taken a mummified body of a 600-800-year-old from a man who claimed it was his ‘girlfriend’.
A former food delivery man Julio Cesar Bermejo (26 years old), claimed that he had the mummy in his home for over three decades. He even slept with it in bed.
‘At home, she’s in my room, she sleeps with me. I take care of her,’ he said in a video that went viral on social media.
Bermejo was taken into custody at Puno’s Mantaro viewpoint. A government official confirmed to AFP that Bermejo will remain in custody while investigators investigate the case.
Local resident Jhan commented: ‘In which virtual store do you buy these things?’, while Gabriela joked: ‘My mummy order hasn’t arrived, what should I do next?’
Another, Juan Carlos, said: ‘So he can’t take his mummy out for a walk anymore?’
Bermejo told local media that the mummy – who he called ‘Juanita’ and referred to as ‘she’ – was ‘like my spiritual girlfriend’ even though the remains once belonged to a man, according to authorities.
According to the former delivery man, his father brought the mummy home 30 or 40 years ago, after plans to donate it to a museum failed. His family bought it for 2,000 Peruvian sol (£434), he said – at the time ‘a lot of money’.
According to Peru’s Ministry of Culture, the pre-Hispanic relic was a ‘mummified adult male individual’.
It was ‘presumably from the eastern area of Puno’, a region in the Peruvian Andes some 1,300 kilometers (more than 800 miles) southeast of Lima.
The remains appear to be well-preserved, suggesting it dates from an era with efficient embalming practices.
