EGYPTOLOGY: How to treat a mummy right

Most of the people know that the Ancient Egyptians were experts in mummification and developed that technique over thousands of years. While some of the mummies we discover today are quite crumbled and only their decorated sarcophagus can give us information about their story, others are still in an extremly good condition and feeding the mysteries around them.

Ancient Egyptian Mummies

The ancient egyptian mummies were always objects of high interest. Not only for archaeologists, but in the earlier times at the dawn of egyptology, when the spirit of adventure and treasure hunting came along with an increasing number of excavations in Egypt, also the "average" people got drawn into that phenomenon.
Mummies were spooky, the "curse of the pharao" was (and sometimes still is) one of the legends built on the secrets that were assumed to be connected with that thousands of years old embalmed bodies.

_{Image 1: Ancient Egyptian Mummy, found in Luxor, dating around 1000 – 660 BC.}

Mummy-unwrap-partys

_{Image 2: "Mumia"}

Did you know that in 19th century there were even dinner partys organized by rich people with a special highlight at the end: the unwrapping of a mummy that were bought at a bazar in Egypt! Piety or something like respect of the death were nothing those people ever considered. The only thing that was interesting was "What's inside?". Sometimes people were expecting treasures in between the layers of linen, which was not unlikely since the Ancient Egyptians used to replace for instance the heart by an amulet in the shape of heart-scarab made of precious stones like lapislazuli or similar.

Mumia - an esoteric medicine

There were rumors going around in the past centuries, grinded up, powdered mummies given as medicine would be a perfect remedy for a lot of complaints and aches. So mummies became popular trading objects that shoot their price to the moon.

The first "mummy-shares"

_{Image 3: A mummy-share}

Not only pharmacists and the high society demanded for more mummies but also museums were heading forward to get more mummies to display in their showcases. To finance a mummy for the Museum in Hamm (Germany) they founded even an organization to buy shares! And they were successful - after raising enough money, the museum could purchase a mummy and the organization could be closed.

Why is a mummy so mysterious?

_{Image 4: Mummy portrait}

At first because it looks like a human body but it has no identity that can be "read" in its face. That's maybe one of the reasons in the late period of Ancient Egypt there an extensive use of so called "mummy portraits" came up. Especially in the western oasis Fayyum were found many of them, and so there are also often named "Fayyum portraits".

But also the movie industry fuels the myth continuously by blockbusters like the famous "The Mummy" movie of Stephen Sommers in 1999. People just like fantastic stories with an uncontrollable, not-of-this-world power. So the remake of the movie in 2017 by Alex Kurtzman with Tom Cruise will surely not be the last one. ;)

How to treat a mummy right

Mummies today are not unwrapped anymore since we are now able to scan them in high resolution. We can look whats inside without destroying anything. In this way a lot of strange things are revealed. Some of the ram mummies for example, used for ritual purposes at a holy temple for the egyptian God Chnum, consisted of female animals.

The latest surprising discovery was made when a team of specialists x-rayed a mummy from a museum that was assumed to be a female singer: it was clearly a castrated man that was wrapped into the linen. Click here for more information

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Image 6: Scan of Callou, Cécile, Borel Thiery, Ètudes radiologiques des momies de béliers en France et en Pologne, in: Delange, Elisabeth/Jaritz, Horst (Hgg.), Elephantine XXV. Der Widderfriedhof des Chnumtempels. Mit Beiträgen zur Archäozoologie und zur Materialkunde (AV 105), 2005.

Added for further reading:

Basic Information: Rose, Mark, Mystery Mummy, in: Archaeology, Vol. 56, No. 2 (March/April 2003), pp. 18-25

(http://www.jstor.org/stable/41779138)

"Mumia": Meyer-Hicken, Benno. Über die Herkunft der Mumia genannten Substanzen und ihre Anwendung als Heilmittel, Dissertation, Kiel 1978. (Translation: „About the origin of the substances of Mumia and their usage as a remedy“)}

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