What should one do on a hot summer afternoon? Explore somewhere cool, like the St. Petersburg Museum of History. I had the exhibits pretty much to myself as I wandered through the city’s past.

One odd-shaped curio cabinet caught my eye and, of course, I couldn’t resist the “Press Here to View” button. I didn’t know what to expect but I was not prepared for a mummy; the actual 3,000-year-old mummified remains of an Egyptian woman.

How in the world did she end up here? Well, after the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, Egyptmania swept around the globe. Thousands of mummies (and related artifacts) were exported for display. In 1924, one of them ended up in a traveling carnival on a ship bound for Tampa.

When the ship docked it was in need of expensive repairs that the captain could not afford. So, in lieu of cash, the Port Authority accepted the mummy and her sarcophagus as payment. In 1925 “Our Lady of the Nile” was donated to the nascent St. Pete museum, where she’s been resting for almost 100 years.

This city never ceases to surprise me!