In the project to repatriate human remains held in the Vatican Museums’ ethnological collection, the Vatican and the government of Peru signed an agreement on 17 October to return to Peru three mummies sent to the Vatican in 1925.
Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, and César Landa Arroyo, foreign minister of Peru, signed an agreement in the Vatican Museums for the return of the mummies.
The three human remains are several centuries old, and could not find the exact age will return to their country. They were found at an altitude of more than 9,800 feet in the Peruvian Andes along the Ucayali River. The mummies are assumed to be Incan.
The mummies were part of the Vatican Museums’ Anima Mundi ethnological collection, which features thousands of pieces of Indigenous art and artifacts from around the world.
With a conviction that human remains are not works of art or collectibles, in 2010 the Vatican Museums began a project to return human remains in its collection to their countries of origin. The first remains, a mummy from Ecuador, were returned in 2014. Three years later, the museums returned to Ecuador a tsantsa, a specially treated head used in ceremonies. At the time, the museums said the three Peruvian mummies were the only human remains still in the collection.
“More than objects, they are human beings. They are human remains that should be buried or be valued with dignity where they come from, which is precisely from the Andes of Peru,” he told Rome Reports and COPE, the radio network of the Spanish bishops’ conference.