Italy's famed Iceman is to have company next year as mummies from all over the world arrive for a major show in this northern Italian city.
Joining the mummified neolithic hunter in his purpose-built museum here will be 70 mummies from Ancient Egypt, Asia, South America and Oceania, organisers said Tuesday.
''It will be the world's most comprehensive show on the history and culture of mummies,'' organisers said.
The show, which includes mummies from just after the Age of the Dinosaurs to the present day, will be accompanied by a symposium featuring the world's top palaeontologists.
Mummies, The Dream of Eternal Life, will run from March 10 to October 25, 2008.
The show will be the second time in two years that the Iceman - otherwise known as Oetzi from the mountain valley where he was found - will welcome mummified guests.
In 2006 he was joined by the so-called 'Cloud People' from South America.
The 5,000-year-old hunter was flanked by 12 members of a large group of mummies found in the mountains of Peru in 1996.
The mummies were from a long-lost tribe called the Chachapoya.
In Inca, Chachapoya means 'People of the Clouds'.
Studies were carried out by Iceman expert Eduard Egarter who found out how they survived.
Ruling out organ extraction and deliberate conservation, he concluded that the extremely cold and dry conditions found at the altitude of their fog-wreathed resting places, some 5,000 feet up in the Andes, were enough to keep them intact.
The Cloud People, who flourished between 800 and 1500 AD, were conquered by the Incas and then killed off by diseases contracted from the Spanish Conquistadores.
The Iceman is perhaps the world's most famous mummy outside Egypt.
The body, which dates back to 3000 BC has spawned a global cottage industry of studies since he was found in a glacier in the Oetz mountain valley in 1991.
There have been discoveries about what he ate and what illnesses he suffered from, as well as a keen debate on how he died from the arrow wound found in his body - initially, it was thought, in a fight with rival hunters.
One theory says he was assassinated in a tribal power struggle.
Another suggested he was the victim of ritual sacrifice.
Another study - fiercely contested by patriotic residents of this formerly Austrian region who see Oetzi as their proud forefather - reckons he was cast out from his community because a low sperm count rendered him childless.
An eerie aura has also grown around the Iceman because of the allegedly mysterious deaths of seven people who came into contact with him.
