Follow Victoria on Twitter. Egyptian mummy's secrets revealed. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. So the basic recipe was:.
How did scientists find the recipe? Fabrics used to wrap Egyptian mummies provided the foundation for this study of ancient chemistry. Why does it matter? Removal of the brain - possibly using a "whisking" process to cause the brain to liquefy Removal of the internal organs Putting the body into a natural salt to dry it out Coating the body in the embalming recipe to kill bacteria and to seal it Wrapping the body in linen.
So successful were they that today we can view the mummified body of an Egyptian and have a good idea of what he or she looked like in life, 3, years ago.
Mummification was practiced throughout most of early Egyptian history. The earliest mummies from prehistoric times probably were accidental. By chance, dry sand and air since Egypt has almost no measurable rainfall preserved some bodies buried in shallow pits dug into the sand.
The practice continued and developed for well over 2, years, into the Roman Period ca. Within any one period the quality of the mummification varied, depending on the price paid for it. The best prepared and preserved mummies are from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Dynasties of the New Kingdom ca. It is the general process of this period that shall be described here. The mummification process took seventy days. Special priests worked as embalmers, treating and wrapping the body.
Beyond knowing the correct rituals and prayers to be performed at various stages, the priests also needed a detailed knowledge of human anatomy. The first step in the process was the removal of all internal parts that might decay rapidly. The brain was removed by carefully inserting special hooked instruments up through the nostrils in order to pull out bits of brain tissue. It was a delicate operation, one which could easily disfigure the face.
The embalmers then removed the organs of the abdomen and chest through a cut usually made on the left side of the abdomen. They left only the heart in place, believing it to be the center of a person's being and intelligence. The other organs were preserved separately, with the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines placed in special boxes or jars today called canopic jars. These were buried with the mummy.
In later mummies, the organs were treated, wrapped, and replaced within the body. Even so, unused canopic jars continued to be part of the burial ritual. The embalmers next removed all moisture from the body. This they did by covering the body with natron, a type of salt which has great drying properties, and by placing additional natron packets inside the body.
When the body had dried out completely, embalmers removed the internal packets and lightly washed the natron off the body. The result was a very dried-out but recognizable human form. Those who built in granite, who erected halls in excellent tombs…their offering stones are desolate, as if they were the dead who died on the riverbank for lack of a survivor. Prince Khaemwase looks out of his window and saw the rich funeral of one man, and the pathetic lack of ceremonies of another.
Saddened at this sight, he is reassured by his son, Sa-Osiris who takes him on a tour of the Underworld:. My Father Setne, did you not see that rich man, clothed in a garment of royal linen, standing near the spot where Osiris is? He is the poor man whom you saw being carried out from Memphis with no one walking behind him and wrapped in a mat. They brought him to the netherworld. They weighed his misdeeds against the good deeds he had done on earth.
They found his good deeds more numerous than his misdeeds in relation to his lifespan, which Thoth has assigned him in writing, and in relation to his luck on earth. It was ordered by Osiris to give the burial equipment of that rich man, whom you saw being carried out from Memphis with great honours, to this poor man, and to place him among the noble spirits, as a man of god who serves Sokar-Osiris, and stands near the spot where Osiris is. Soon after death, the body was taken to the wabet, the 'pure place,' where the embalming actually was carried on.
This appears to have been a tent, away from residential areas, on the edge of the desert. The dry heat of the desert air and the sun pounding down on the linen roof would have speeded the drying process.
Drying and wrapping took about seventy days. The formal mourning period may have coincided with the embalming. The tomb of Ankhmahor shows the body of the tomb-owner being taken from his own home, amid much weeping. Two women play the roles of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys; they are called the djeret mourners. The women who performed these parts may have been professional ritual practitioners, or members of the family. Tombs of the Nobles, and even of the Craftsmen of the New Kingdom, show the same ritual djeret mourners, who may have been family members or professionals, hired for the event.
The body was ferried across the Nile from the East Bank, where the living dwell, to the West, the land of the Dead. The coffin would then be dragged on a sledge from the water's edge to the tomb itself. In the case of kings, the mummification may have been carried out in the Valley Temple, and the body then dragged up the Causeway to the Mortuary Temple at the base of the pyramid. Craftsmen performed the funeral ceremonies for their friends, and seem to have carried the mummified body to its tomb, much as pallbearers carry a coffin.
In front of the tomb, lector priests read out prayers, and burned incense before the coffin and the ka statues. For kings, there would be dancing and singing by priestesses, and sacrifices of animals. Richer nobles probably had similar ceremonies, on a smaller scale.
Singers and dancers could be hired for such occasions. A procession carried the wordily possessions of the dead person to the tomb. Considerable amounts of cloth, cosmetics and furniture, as well as the traditional food offerings were placed in the tomb. Finally, when the coffin was in its place, a ritual practitioner would perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, probably on the ka statue, to enable the dead person to see, hear, breathe, eat and speak again.
One of the last acts of the ritual practitioners would be to sweep footprints from the floor of the burial chamber. The final part of a funeral was a funerary banquet, perhaps somewhat like an Irish Wake at which the relatives and friends of the deceased, sure that everything possible had been done for the safety of their loved one, could relax a little, and remember the good times.
It was the priests and bureaucrats of the Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Dynasties who collected the ravaged New Kingdom mummies from their tombs in the Valley of the Kings and reburied them safely, but without glamour, in old tombs.
During their clearance of the Royal Tombs, they had the opportunity to observe hundreds of mummies. As robbers had often torn the bandages in search of jewellery, the bodies had been laid bare. For perhaps the first time in Egyptian history, embalmers could examine the results of their predecessors' work. They clearly thought that even the best of previous attempts had not been completely successful.
Embalmers of this period tried to improve upon the New Kingdom model. They sometimes introduced packing of sawdust, natron, or other materials under the skin. They added false eyes of faience or stone. Bodies were even painted, red-brown for men, yellow for women, and 'make-up' applied to faces, to enhance their life-like appearance.
Wigs of twisted yarn were sometimes placed on the body or woven into the mummy's natural hair. Unfortunately, these attempts to recreate a life-like appearance were not always successful. The packing materials could swell up, giving the body a very plump or even pregnant appearance, or burst through the skin, leaving a cracked, very unattractive face.
Perhaps in an attempt to make the body more complete, or perhaps because they had seen that canopic jars were often smashed by robbers, the embalmers now often wrapped the internal organs and then returned them to the body cavity. The canopic packages might also be placed inside the coffin, between the legs of the mummy. Artificial Mummies. A great many mummies remain from the later periods of Egyptian history, and it is these that are usually encountered in museums.
Then it is filled with pure crushed myrrh, cassia, and all other aromatic substances, except frankincense. When this period. N atron, a disinfectant and desiccating agent, was the main ingredient used in the mummification process. A compound of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate salt and baking soda , natron essentially dried out the corpse. Obtained from dried-up river beds, it was packed around and inside the body in linen bags, and left for 35 to 40 days to draw moisture out of the tissues.
By removing the organs and packing the internal cavity with dry natron, the body tissues were preserved. The body was filled with Nile mud, sawdust, lichen and cloth scraps to make it more flexible. Small cooking onions or linen pads were sometimes used to replace the eyes. Beginning in the third dynasty, the internal organs lungs, stomach, liver and intestines were removed, washed with palm wine and spices, and stored in four separate canopic jars made of limestone, calcite or clay.
Prior to this, the abdominal contents were removed, wrapped and buried in the floor of the tomb. However, the heart was left in the body because it was considered the centre of intelligence. T he corpse was then washed , wrapped in linen as many as 35 layers and soaked in resins and oils. This gave the skin a blackened appearance resembling pitch. The term "mummification" comes from the Arabic word mummiya , which mean bitumen, a pitch substance that was first used in the preservation process during the Late Period.
The family of the deceased supplied the burial linen, which was made from old bed sheets or used clothing. I n the Middle Kingdom , it became standard practice to place a mask over the face of the deceased.
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