A discovery straight out of legend, a mummified mermaid figure is a remarkable artifact of historical hoaxes, most famously embodied by the Fiji Mermaid. This chilling and grotesque creation was not a real mermaid but a macabre assemblage of animal parts, most famously presented to the public by the cunning showman P.T. Barnum in the 1840s. The artifact consisted of the head and torso of a monkey sewn to the tail of a fish, its mouth agape and its body dried and shriveled to enhance its eerie appearance.

The popularity of the Fiji Mermaid and other similar hoaxes, such as the Feejee Mermaid, reveals a deep-seated human fascination with the bizarre and the mythical. In a time before modern science and photography, these artifacts were presented as tangible proof of a world filled with wonders. The “mermaids,” along with other fabricated curiosities like dragon bones and giant human skeletons, were a major draw for museums and traveling shows.

Today, these mummified mermaid figures are not seen as proof of mythical creatures but as historical artifacts in their own right. They are a fascinating glimpse into the history of entertainment, the public’s thirst for the sensational, and the ingenious (if unethical) lengths to which people would go to profit from it.