After arriving in Edinburgh, Scotland, the StuckatTheAirport musueum team made a beeline for the National Museum of Scotland to find the Arthur’s Seat Coffins (see below).
But before we could wend our way to the corner of the vast museum where the wee cofffins are displayed, we stopped to pay our respects to Dolly the sheep.
Dolly was was the first cloned mammal created from an adult cell. Dolly the sheep began life at Scotland’s Roslin Insittute and was named after the late country music legend, Dolly Parton.
Here are Dolly Parton’s thoughts on having Dolly the sheep named for her. And Parton’s thoughts on whether or not she wanted to be cloned. (From an interview with The Guardian in 2024)
“I was flattered. You know, when the scientists cloned Dolly the sheep, they used the mammary glands. That’s what they call them … glands … the boobs. They said: “Oh, we have this sheep, Dolly …” Everybody always played up to these [points to her chest], so that’s why we had Dolly the sheep. I was sorry when she died, though I don’t want be cloned myself. I want to get on out of here when I can. We already get a lot of Dolly lookalikes, a lot of Dolly drag queens. I can just send them down to the store instead of me.“
Tiny, spooky coffins
(Image courtesy of the National Museum of Scotland)
After visiting Dolly the Sheep, we tracked down the corner of the museum where a mysterious set of miniature coffins are on display.
Known as the Arthur’s Seat coffins, 17 of these tiny wooden coffins containing carved figures were found back in June 1836 neatly laid out in a cave on Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano in Edinburgh.
Eight of these coffins still exist and are on display in the National Museum of Scotland. Each coffin is less than 4 inches long and, when found, all the figures in the coffins were clothed.
But after all these years, who made the coffins – and why – remains a mystery.
Did it have something to do with murder, witchery, sorcery or something else?
Theories abound, and you can read a long list of them on the museum website.
But in the meantime, we’d encourage you to visit them in person if you can.
Just don’t go alone.
