By OnMilwaukee Staff Writers   Published Jul 27, 2010 at 10:59 AM

The "Mummies of the World" exhibition began with a mysterious and rare find of 20 human mummies hidden in the basement of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim, Germany in 2004.

Today, it's the largest traveling exhibition of mummies ever assembled. And, this winter it's coming to the Milwaukee Public Museum. MPM will be the second stop for the exhibit. It opens Dec. 17.

The exhibit, currently on display at the California Science Center, presents a never-before-seen collection of both accidental and intentionally preserved mummies.

The exhibit includes more than 100 mummies including a 10-month-old baby, the Detmold child, that's on loan from the Lippisches Landes museum in Detmold, Germany.