Mummies are not about screams and horror

When we think of mummies we imagine ghosts that come out of the dead wrapped in white bandages. But this is pure Hollywood.

Mummies are not about screams and horror. They are actually about science and knowledge. Mummies have taught us about the human body. The study of a group of them revealed that an entire Egyptian hamlet was wiped out by malaria. Their discovery led us to the ancient kingdom of Machu Pichu in the Andes. Today mummies are studied scientifically to get a glimpse of the past. But how were they made?

Two thousand five hundred years ago, a Greek tourist, after a visit to Egypt, wrote down what he thought was the way Egyptians fabricated mummies. We do not know if his record is accurate because Egyptians kept the process of mummification a closely guarded secret. Egyptian hieroglyphics (pictorial writing) just tell us that when the king died his body was ferried across the Nile to the embalmer’s tent on a hill for mummification.

The Greek wrote that the process was carried out amid the chanting of sacred verses. A priest wearing the jackal-headed mask of Anubis, the god of embalming, stood watching the ceremony. The embalmers first removed the king’s organs, dehydrated the body and covered it with black resin (The Persians saw this and said, "Mummia!" – black tar – and the name stuck). They then wrapped it in pure white linen with amulets (lucky charms) inside. The last rites were performed and the body was placed in the coffin. The pharaoh was ready for his journey into immortality.

Why was mummification so important to the ancient Egyptians? The Egyptians believed the dead had to go into the next world. And you needed all you had in this life to keep you in comfort there. The pharaohs built huge tombs (pyramids) to bury their body and store their vast treasures including chariots and thrones.

The interesting part is that they continued to build their own final resting-place believing that the minute they stopped the construction they would die. Tombs of non-royals are a vast storehouse of not only goods but also information about the life of people in ancient times.

Bob Brier, the famous Egyptologist, decided to try the ancient Egyptian method of embalming to find out the secret of mummification. He would mummify a cadaver using ancient tools and following the same techniques.

He bought frankincense and myrrh at the spice bazaar in Cairo. Then he went to a dry lake in Egypt to dig for large slabs of Natron or natury in Egypt meaning godly stuff. Natron is a naturally occurring salt made of sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride which in everyday language is baking soda and table salt. Bob Brier also needed the exotic palm wine which the ancients used to wash the body of the king. He imported this from Nigeria.

Bob and his surgeon friend began the procedure in a lab in New York. They inserted a long, straight instrument into the nose and pushed it into the cranium. Using a bent wire they managed to rotate the cranium till the brain was reduced to a liquid. When they turned the body the brain ran out of the nose. The internal organs responsible for decay had to be removed next. Brier and his helper made small incisions in the abdomen with a piece of obsidian – a dark glass-like substance formed of frozen lava. With great difficulty they pulled out the liver and other organs through the slits. The next step was to fill the now-empty abdominal cavity with the Nigerian palm wine. Along with it went the chunks of incense from the spice bazaar. The body was now covered completely with Natron to hurry the process of dehydration.

They placed the cadaver in a controlled environment exactly like that in Egypt .

When they shook off the Natron after 35 days, the body looked remarkably like the ancient mummies. (It was the embalming that gave the mummies their look). After more drying Bob unwrapped the bandages and cat-scanned his mummy. The holes he had made matched those in the ancient mummies. His method was the one followed 3000 years ago.

Though the world took a long time to show interest in mummies, tomb robbers had always plundered them. When Egyptian civilisation began to decline, the tombs could no longer be guarded. So the pharaoh transported the mummies that had not been vandalised to a sacred tomb.

At the end of the 19th Century, beautiful Egyptian antiques began to appear in the markets. Someone had found a royal tomb. Investigations led to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt where some of the greatest kings like Rameses had been buried. They had remained there for 3000 years, safe from tomb robbers. In 1922, Howard Carter unearthed the spectacular mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen in Luxor.

You will be surprised to know that it was not the Egyptians who made the first mummies. Along the coast of Peru, Chilean fishermen were mummifying the bodies of their deceased 3000 years before Tutankhamen was born. Thousands of mummies have been uncovered on the Chinchura beach of South America. Communities of mummies have been found in the catacombs of Europe.

The ancient Chinese too, were expert in this art. Some of their mummies have their internal organs intact and their limbs are still flexible. These were filled with mercury which kept the bacteria away.

Modern dating techniques help us determine the age of these mummies. The star of the mummy world is that of a South American baby which is believed to be 6000 years old.

Egyptians gave up the practice of mummifying their dead 2000 years ago when they embraced Christianity. But the art of mummification lives on. Lenin, father of the Soviet Union, is one of the best-preserved mummies of the world. German embalmers immersed his body in formaldehyde.

The enormously popular first lady of Argentina, Eva Peron died in 1952. Over a year her embalmers removed the water from her body and replaced it with wax. She looked remarkably alive when she was laid to rest in 1974.

While the Egyptians covered their dead in black resin and cotton bandages, the South Americans bound them in beautifully woven cloth. Chinese princes were wrapped in thin rectangles of priceless jade. Prince Li Shu’s suit had 4000 pieces of rare white jade strung together with gold wire.

Sadly, early archeologists did not pay attention to the bodies when they first discovered the mummies. Tutankamen’s body was sawn in half as it was stuck to the coffin with resin.

Bob Brier says our fascination with the mummies may be due to envy. A well-preserved mummy is a recognisable human being looking back at us from 2000 years. He is a window to our past.