peripathetic

Now, who can guess what this is?

Twisty bit of wire? It's bronze actually. Still no clue? It's a mummification probe from the British Museum's interesting online database. Basically, they stick this up your nose when you're dead, push hard so it breaks through the bone between your nasal cavity and brain, and then twizzle it around so it breaks up the brain. The pieces are then spiked and pulled back out through your nose. When you're dead, obviously. And why? Because the brain didn't have any significance to the ancient egyptians, but the heart did, and it was where the personality, thoughts etc. were thought to reside.

I love museums. They contain objects of such bizarre, and sometimes grotesque, significance under the polite patina of educated research and endless quiet Sunday afternoons.