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SALT LAKE CITY — "That's a lot of security," said Tiffany Childers, an onlooker from Mobile, Alabama, who watched as six men in black suits and sunglasses popped out of two hulking SUVs.
The mummies have returned to Salt Lake City.
They traveled in crates and trunks, and came 2,000 miles from Orlando, Florida. And on Tuesday morning, they arrived at last in front of The Leonardo museum downtown.
As people behind her unloaded crates presumably containing mummified remains, Alexandra Hesse, the executive director of The Leonardo, tried to explain the public's sometimes gruesome, sometimes scientific, sometimes mystical fascination with mummies.
"I think it's a fascination we have with our own bodies," Hesse said. "And it's a fascination with the real — these aren't just stories about people, these are real people."
The Mummies of the World exhibition is back for a second run at The Leonardo after the exhibition's first run in 2013 became one of the museum's biggest hits, Hesse said.
The popularity of the mummies exhibit was second only to the Body Worlds exhibit, Hesse said. Both are examples of a new genre of traveling museum exhibitions created by for-profit companies like American Exhibitions, Inc., which markets its Mummies of the World exhibition as "the largest exhibition of real mummies and artifacts ever assembled."
Marcus Corwin, the president and CEO, said many of the mummies in the exhibition come from a collection of 20 mummies presumed to be lost during World War II. They were rediscovered in the vaults of a German museum in 2004.
"These mummies are very unique time travelers," Corwin said. "Unlike you and I, they're somewhere between life and death for eternity."
On Tuesday, seven tractor-trailers hauling more than 45 mummies and 150 artifacts pulled up in front of The Leonardo. Flanked by half a dozen security officers, exhibit officials signed the mummies into the museum's safekeeping.
The specimens — some intentionally preserved, some naturally preserved — came from as far as the Netherlands, Peru and, of course, Egypt.
More than 80 percent of the exhibition is new, Hesse said. New bodies that will be on display include those of the Burn Collection — a collection of medical mummies dating from the early 19th century used to teach anatomy classes — and Mumab, the first modern mummy created with ancient Egyptian tools and techniques by researchers at the University of Maryland.
- What: "Mummies of the World: The Exhibition"
- Where: The Leonardo, 209 E. 500 South
- When: Dec. 18, 2015, through March 6, 2016; Saturdays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Fridays 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
- How much: $22.50 for adults; $19.50 for children ages 12-17, senior citizens, members of the military and students with a valid ID; $18 for children ages 6-11
- Phone: 801-531-9800
- Web:theleonardo.org
Scientists are continuing to learn from mummies, using technology like CT scans and microbiological analysis to unwrap the mysteries of how these people died, and more importantly, how they lived.
"Even though the mummy is 5,000 years old, the science isn't done," Hesse said.
One of the mummies she remembers most vividly from the last collection was a Peruvian woman who was preserved crouching.
"She still had a full head of hair," Hesse said. "And I was just so fascinated by who she might have been and why she was in this position and the fact that she was preserved because she was living at such high altitudes so it was so dry."
The process of transporting the preserved bodies and artifacts — some as old as 4,500 years — was a "major, major production," Corwin said.
That process involved removing the mummies from the exhibition in Orlando, checking them for decomposition or tampering, fitting them into custom-made crates and boxes, packing them into climate-controlled trucks and making a 2,000-mile pilgrimage across the country with a large security detail.
Now more than 30 curators and exhibition staff will do the reverse: unloading, staging, painting, lighting, labeling and designing for the opening on Dec. 18.
The nine-gallery, 3,000-square-foot exhibition will run for 11 weeks.
The Leonardo is also adding programs like a culinary night based on the theme of preservation — of food, not of humans — to give the exhibition more depth.
One of the hardest things for the museum will be climate control — not always easy in a state known for some of the driest air in the country.
"I think we're the only venue that had to add humidity," Hesse said.
