A London museum has started a crowdfunding campaign to purchase a mummy - and those who help them out will get their hands on some rather unusual thank you gifts.
The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, at the Last Tuesday Society in Hackney, is raising money so it can buy a 1000-year-old mummified head of a young boy from the Chimú in Peru.
The museum claims to display a range of intriguing items from a two-headed lamb to fairies.
It says it needs to raise £6,666 to purchase the head and buy a climate-controlled head for it to be kept in.
On its IndieGoGo page, the museum explained: “Almost two years ago thanks to the extraordinary generosity of almost 500 people we built and opened ‘The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History’.
“The museum has had over 15,000 visitors and now it is time to buy the museum a birthday present & fill a gaping void in it’s collection of wonders.
“We have been offered an exceptionally fine and absurdly beautiful 1000-year-old mummified head of a young boy from the Chimú in Peru.”
But for those who do help out the crowdfunder, there are some rather unusual thank-you gifts on offer.
A donation of £30 will get you a pinch of mummy dust, while £35 will earn you the skull of a small animal.
For £43 you can get yourself a real human bone from the 19th century and for £100 you can get your hands on a pair of Viktor Wynd’s own used underwear.
£550 will get you a whale penis bone and for the sum of £2,000, donors will be allowed to take the mummy home for the night.
You can see the full list of rewards here.
“Hackney needs a mummy now,” the museum explains.
“The museum welcomes almost 1,000 visitors a month who come from all over the world to see our collection of shrunken heads, dodo bones, mermaids, unicorns, fairies, extinct bird feathers, old master etchings, Furbies, occult paintings, Cyclop’s skull, giant’s bones, scientific & medical instruments, erotica, ethnographica, masks, dead fish, dandies & more but we don’t have a mummy & we desperately need & want a mummy & only you can make our dream come true.
“But this is not just about us - it’s also about Hackney. Hackney doesn’t have a mummy & it’s just not fair - Camden has 1,000s of mummies in the British & Petrie museums & the Welcome Collection. Why should Camden have all the mummies? Hackney needs a mummy now (not another yummy mummy a Dead Mummy).”