From thousand-year-old crocodiles to a 20th-century girl with pneumonia, these mummies tell amazing stories of life and death.

“There was something strangely moving about her finger,” researcher Chip Brown said of the 2,500-year-old mummy of an ancient Egyptian queen named Hatshepsut.

While ancient Egyptian mummies are the most famous, there are many mummies found in other ancient and modern civilizations around the world.From ancient sacrificial livestock to powerful queens, mummies continue to bridge the past and present. They are evidence of humanity’s attempt to be remembered even after death.Below are the 9 most surreal and impressive mummies, listed by National Geographic.

Mummy of pharaoh Ramses II in the Egyptian Museum. This emperor, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC, is considered one of the most powerful rulers of the Egyptian Empire.

The Grauballe Man is a natural mummy formed after centuries of burial in peat bogs. This man had his throat slit and thrown into a swamp more than 2,000 years ago in modern Denmark.

A crocodile mummy delights many people thousands of years after its death. Animals were often mummified in ancient Egypt as prized pets or incarnations of a deity.

The sitting and fully clothed skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is located in University College, London. The English philosopher who died in 1832 requested that his body be preserved as an “automatic symbol.”

A leg was found in a swamp in 1944. Body parts accidentally preserved in swamps were often found by farmers.

An Egyptian queen’s gazelle has been mummified as a member of the royal family. The antelope’s body was buried with its female owner around 945 BC.

An Inca mummy in Lima, Peru. The bodies of this tribe’s men, women and children were all wrapped in delicately woven cloth and naturally mummified after centuries in the arid climate.

The mummy of 2-year-old Rosalia Lombardo lies in the Capuchin Catacombs underground cemetery in Italy. Although she died of pneumonia in 1920, her body was remarkably preserved.

Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1479 to 1458 BC. While her grave was discovered in 1903, it was not until 2006 that her mummy was identified.