High in the Peruvian Andes, near the summit of Nevado Ampato, an avalanche tore open a secret grave and spilled its contents down the mountain.
Among pieces of cloth, figurines and small bags of corn was the perfectly preserved body of a beautiful Inca girl with long black hair and delicately curled fingers.The Ice Maiden, as the 500-year-old frozen mummy came to be known, was brought down from the mountain in September 1995. In May, she arrived at the National Geographic Society's Explorers Hall and was featured in the June issue of its magazine.
In early June, standing near the dead girl's refrigerated glass case where tourists tiptoed past, Hilda Augusta Vidal Vidal spoke quietly about her in Spanish.
"See the fine features and long neck," she said. "The bones of the young girl are still supple, and her molar teeth are just coming up."
Vidal, a physical anthropologist and curator at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru in Lima, was a vocal advocate for bringing the Ice Maiden to the United States.
Although many Peruvians opposed letting this national treasure leave, the Ministry of Education agreed to allow sophisticated CT-scan studies to be done at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. From those and other studies to be conducted at Catholic University in Arequipa, Peru, scientists hope to learn more about the Incas' diet, health problems and conditions of life.
When the National Geographic Society was permitted to display the mummy, its officials asked Vidal to accompany her.
Speaking of her charge, Vidal's tone was admiring and maternal.
"I am not married," the tiny, graceful 56-year-old said. "The work is my husband, the mummies are my daughters."
As a specialist in ancient Inca burial practices that included mummifying all the dead, not just royalty, Vidal could be said to have a large extended family.
But when she spoke of this long-dead 13-year-old, a smile rippled across her nut-brown face, and she admitted a special kinship.
"I have a feeling for her," she said. Then, pointing to the small, curled slipper in the case, she added, "Her shoes are the same size as mine."
Like the Ice Maiden, Vidal grew up in the Andes. The daughter of two teachers, she was born in a village called Huari, about 200 miles north of Lima. As a child, her interest was awakened by ceremonial sites and a stone Inca temple near her home.
That interest became her passion. She went on to study anthropology at Lima's San Marco University, the oldest university in the Americas, founded in 1553.
Like most Peruvians, Vidal is of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage. But growing up in a small village, where she learned to grow the ancient crops of corn and potatoes, gave her important insights into the world of the Ice Maiden.
"Maybe we lacked money," she said, "but were compensated by the beauty of the mountains, by the human warmth and respect of the villagers."
That understanding has helped Vidal reconstruct the girl's life.
The well-preserved body and contents of her tomb are being intensively studied after their discovery by a high-altitude archaeologist, Johan Reinhard of the University of Chicago, and his climbing companion, Miguel Zarate. The pair carried them down Mount Ampato.
The Ice Maiden's beautiful dress and finely woven red shawl indicate a well-born young woman. Another indication, according to Vidal, is the number of cloth wrappings. "The more important (people) were wrapped in more and more cloth, some embroidered."
She was in a sitting position, Vidal believes, because the Incas believe that in death "physically we begin another life, so they didn't want her lying down for good, but just resting."
The objects with her, vases, food, drink, utensils and a small goddesslike doll with a headdress, were, Vidal said, "like a trousseau" - things needed for a new life.
Sometimes, she noted, during festivals, the Incas "would take the most important mummies out of their tombs and change their clothes, their food and drink" to refresh them.
On these matters, Vidal is in close agreement with other experts on Andean mummies, such as Rein-hard.
But they disagree on how the Ice Maiden died. Most experts state that she, like other mummies, including two children who were found on Nevado Ampato, was sacrificed.
Vidal, who stressed they do not yet know how she died, prefers to believe otherwise.
She imagines instead that the maiden perhaps died accidentally.
"It is a big question," she said.
In order to honor her, Vidal speculated, "The family mummified her, then put her up on the mountain for the gods."