It was during August 2014 when the 7 month exhibition at the Drents Museum in Assen, Holland. After the exhibition, the experts and the scientists wanted to conduct a deeper analysis of the mummy. According to Fox News, Vincent van Vilsteren, the curator of archeology at the Drents Museum said "After the exhibition, we had some more questions about the inner part of this mummy."
The Buddha statue was bought by a person in 1996 who was not aware about its inner contents.
What they found inside, surprised everyone.
The CT scan showed the remains of a Buddhist monk inside the statue. This increased the curiosity of the scientists and so they decided to perform an endoscopy on the statue in which they carefully inserted a small camera inside the mummy/statue.
"What we thought was lung tissue, was not lung tissue, but what seems to be the remains of little pieces of paper with Chinese writing on them inside the body.
There are still some investigations going on, DNA research is going on." Vilsteren said.
The mummy is believed to be of a Buddhist master of the Chinese Meditation School. The monk's name was Liuquan and he is believed to have died around 1100 A.D.
They also found that there was a 14th century textile roll beneath the body. According to Van Vilsteren, the body of the monk might be worshipped in a temple as a mummy, and then in the 14th century, it was made into a statue.
This 1000 year old statue of a mummified monk has received much more attention mainly due to the recent discovery of a 200 year old monk's corpse in Mongolia. The corpse was intact and it was found in the lotus position in the Mongolia's Songinokhairkhan province. It is astonishing that the corpse had remained intact for over 200 years.
The 1000 year old Buddha statue will be on display in the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest till early May.
