Brazil termite hunters find 200-year-old mummy

Exterminators looking for termites in a monastery in Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo found a mummy and a skeleton believed to be at least 200 years old, the head of the monastery said on Tuesday. ''There were some mounds of termite dust and the exterminators broke into the walls to see what was in there," Father Armenio Rodrigues Nogueira, who is in charge of the monastery, one of the city's oldest, told Reuters.

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If you click "read more", it takes you to the Reuters website and the whole story that they've seen fit to print so far. The story says that the mummy and the skeleton that were found in that wall are believed to be of two nuns. Uhm.. Nuns? In a monastery? I thought monks were in monasteries and nuns were in convents. It makes me wonder about the place. Was it always a monastery? Did monks and nuns live together in a monastery 200 years ago?

Hmm... A little investigation... I found a link that tells a bit about the history of the place: Mosteiro da Luz. Ok, according to this article the place is also a convent. Ok, that solves the mystery of nuns in a monastery. I still have to wonder why the two women were in the wall! Did the termite inspectors stumble upon a 200 year old crime scene? Or did they bury people in the walls 200 years ago? Weird!

Hmmm... More investigation (don't you just love google? LOL) came up with some more information. BBC News has an article about it. A snippet from that article says: "The bodies were found in the wall of an area inside the monastery that was used as a cemetery. About 129 nuns were buried within the building between 1774 and 1822, when burials started to take place outside." Ok, so nothing mysterious happened.. lol, but it gave me a few minutes of snooping and surfing around for more information.