ICEMAN HAS ANNIVERSARY BASH

(ANSA) - Bolzano, September 20 - Italy's famed Iceman mummy had an anniversary bash this week as his purpose-built museum celebrated 20 years since two German tourists spotted him peeping out of a northern Italian glacier.

''Oetzi has been great for us, the city and tourism in the entire region,'' South Tyrol Archaeology Museum Director Angelika Fleckinger said after the Copper Age man, 2,000 years older than Tutankhamen, welcomed kids to play with prehistoric bows and arrows and offered 'neolithic' food for visitors.

An ongoing row over whether to turn on an expensive new liquid-nitrogen-fed chamber for the mummy slightly dampened the fun at the foot of the Similaun glacier.

Researchers are unsure whether some bugs recently found on his body are able to survive without oxygen and thus might thrive on the new system, which is similar to those used in the Royal Chamber in Cairo and to preserve the original copy of the US Constitution.

So the new refrigerated locker, commissioned in 2007 and costing 80,000 euros, is still waiting to be turned on.

But the anniversary celebrations still had a special resonance for Fleckinger.

''Sometimes I think it is so strange. He died 5,000 years ago yet this person, this Iceman, has become an important part of my life''.

Forensic science has made great strides since the Iceman was found in the Oetzal Alps - hence his name, Oetzi - by a couple of German hikers on September 19, 1991.

''We know so much about him, that he had blue eyes and a few diseases, was getting on a bit at 46, and died from an arrow wound.

''But we will maybe never know what really happened in the last hours and minutes of his life''.

The Iceman may still be something of a mystery but his generosity to his adoptive home town is no secret.

According to the most recent figures, the refrigerated man earns a total of four million euros each year for restaurants, hotels and souvenir-sellers, Fleckinger said.

Year round, except for Christmas Day, New Year's Day and May Day, he also raises 3.5 million in ticket fees at the restructured bank that houses him.

That means he pays about half of the Bolzano Archaeological Museum's costs, drawing in over one thousand people a day.

This compares to the average of 15% which other Italian museums defray out of visitors' pockets.

The Iceman's status as a global star - even Brad Pitt is rumoured to have a tattoo of him - is reflected by the 26 documentaries made about him by the world's TV companies.

He is perhaps the world's most famous mummy outside Egypt.

The body, which dates back to 3000 BC, has spawned a global cottage industry of studies.

There have been discoveries about what he ate and what illnesses he suffered from, as well as a keen debate on how he died from the arrow wound found in his body - initially, it was thought, in a fight with rival hunters.

One theory says he was assassinated in a tribal power struggle.

Another suggested he was the victim of ritual sacrifice.

Another study - fiercely contested by patriotic residents of this formerly Austrian region who see Oetzi as their proud forefather - reckons he was cast out from his community because a low sperm count rendered him childless.

An eerie aura has also grown around the Iceman because of the allegedly mysterious deaths of seven people who came into contact with him soon after he was found.