Nikola Nevenov
When we think of Ancient Egypt, there are a few very obvious things that immediately come to mind: pyramids, Egyptian gods and goddesses, pharaohs, and of course, mummies. Archeologists have spent centuries studying the mummification process Ancient Egyptians used to preserve the deceased, and have been utterly marveled at how well these techniques worked for a civilization that lacked the sort of modern science we take for granted today.
As it turns out, mummification was a science unto itself—and one that the Egyptians were damn good at. In a new study published in Nature on Feb. 1, a group of European scientists used new chemical techniques to study the remains of the necropolis at Saqqara, one of Egypt’s most prominent burial grounds used for thousands of years. The findings reveal that the recipe for mummification was much more ornate and complicated than we ever imagined, and made use of a host of ingredients not local to Egypt.
Mummification has always been known to be an intricate process, involving salts to remove moisture from the body to arrest major decomposition, the removal of most major organs, and protecting the body inside and out with a spate of oils, resins, and ointments. But over time, the knowledge for how all of this was accomplished has been lost—causing researchers to focus less on the translation of ancient texts, and more on state-of-the-art laboratory investigations that can uncover the process in its original chemistry.