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with them. Rohl has only used selective facts which fit found in the Andes of Peru are found to have been cov-
his views. This may sell books and videos, but is not ered with a thin layer of fish paste, which apparently
good scholarship. promotes preservation.

Rohl's efforts are creative and not bad in themselves. In the grave with Cherchen Man were three adult
Unfortunately, they do not stand up with the corpus of women. Two of the corpses were not very well pre-
known evidence. The real problem is that Rohl is served, but the third remained in excellent condition.
aware of this, but goes ahead anyway. It is good for Cherchen Woman was over six feet tall and was buried
business, but bad for a better understanding of the Bi- wearing a dark red robe onto which had been painted a
ble and the ancient world. In fact, ill-founded efforts pattern of swirls and spirals. The spiral pattern is inter-
like Rohl's actually hurt other scholars who are hon- esting because it offers some clues to the origins of
estly trying to make the same type of connections be- the Cherchen people. The Cherchen spirals are very
tween the Bible and secular history. similar to those found in the Aegean and also on tombs
in Ireland.
The Mummies of Urumchi
The oldest mummies come from Loulan in the Takla-
makan Desert. Their clothing is not as colorful as the
In the museums of Urumchi, the windswept regional Cherchen mummies, but their bodies are just as well
capital of the Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western preserved. While the Cherchen mummies date from
China -- what we know as Chinese Turkistan -- a col- about 1000 B.C.E. (around the time when Saul and
lection of ancient mummies lay at the center of an David ruled in Israel), the Loulan mummies date from
enormous mystery. The oldest is 4000 years old -- about 2000 B.C.E., the era of Abraham and the patri-
contemporaneous with the much more famous Egyp- archs. The Beauty of Loulan is the premier mummy of
tian mummies. But these prehistoric people are not the region. Four thousand years after her death, her
Oriental. They are Caucasian -- tall, large-nosed, and face is serene and lovely. Like a supermodel, her face
blond with round eyes (that may have been blue). And appears on wall posters and CD covers of recordings
they are wearing beautifully preserved woolen clothes by local musicians.
woven in a pattern we would recognize as tartan plaid.
Who were the mummies? The best evidence suggests
What were these blondes doing in the foothills of the that they were Tokharians, an Indo-European nation
Himalayas? Where did they come from? Were they that must have emigrated to the Tarim Basin from
Celts as their plaid clothing suggests?
much farther west. Frescoes that the later Tokharians
painted of themselves making gifts to Buddhist monas-
In The Mummies of Urumchi, Elizabeth Wayland Bar- teries show the donors with light brown or even red
ber, author of Women's Work, pieces together the his- hair, handlebar mustaches and occasionally full beards,
tory of these mysterious people, the world to which high-bridged noses -- clearly not Mongolian or Chi-
they belonged, and their connections to the West. nese. Physically, the Tokharians resemble the huge,
blonde, pale-eyed Celtic warriors the Greeks and Ro-
One of the oldest mummies is Cherchen Man. In life, mans went up against in ancient times.
about 1000 B.C.E., he stood six foot six inches tall.
He was buried wearing a two-piece suit of purplish- Furthermore, linguistically, the Tokharians share more
red-brown wool, soft white deerskin boots, and gaudy features with the Celtic languages of the Scots, Irish,
strips of red, yellow and blue wool wrapped around his Welsh, and Bretons than with any other Indo-European
feet and legs like stockings.
language. This similarity of Tokharians and Celts ex-
tends into textile technology, too. Archaeological evi-
When the mummies were first brought to the museum, dence shows us that the Celts have been weaving plaid
they were disrobed so that grave dirt and any mold or twills, or tartans, for 3000 years at least. In fact, the
fungus could be cleaned off the corpses. The curators Bronze and Iron Age ancestors of the historic Celts
found that the better preserved mummies had been wove woolen plaid cloth that is almost identical to
painted with some substance that left a fine yellow modern examples from Scotland. The chief difference
dust or fuzz on their bodies. Laboratory tests dis- is that the ancient plaids contain no more than two or
closed that the dust was an animal protein, but gave no three colors, while the modern tartans are generally
other specifics. It's interesting to note that mummies
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