Which mummies were destroyed

Medical recipes list "mummy" as an ingredient. It was even taken straight. King Francis I of France, in fact, took a pinch of mummy every day with rhubarb. And who says what's worse, rhubarb or mummy? He believed that it would make him stronger and invincible, and would stop assassins from killing him.

Hundreds and thousands of mummies were destroyed for medicine. Others were burned as kindling or wood, because there aren't that many trees in Egypt. There are 19th-century accounts of travelers who say, "Oh, it's unseasonably cold and we've run out of wood, so we have to throw a mummy on the fire. Mummies were considered very Gothic.

And in the Victorian era, when anything neo-Gothic was cool, unwrapping mummies became very stylish. So people would bring back or buy mummies from Egypt and have unwrapping parties. We have invitations saying, "Come to Lord Longsberry's at 2 p. However, there were some people, such as a man called Thomas Pettigrew, who was later called Mummy Pettigrew.

He was a trained medical doctor, and he did a lot of unwrappings to understand how mummies were made. In the 19th century, he published one of the first scholarly works on how mummies were produced.

Lots of mummies were destroyed by robbers looking for gold and jewels on the bodies, and also the amulets. Heart scarabs attracted particular attention because a lot of tourists collected them, and tomb robbers knew where they would be located. So we often have mummies with big holes in their chests where the robbers took away the heart scarabs. A great many mummies were lost because people didn't really think of them as artifacts, or even as human beings deserving of respect.

They were regarded as merely the carriers of objects such as jewelry and amulets, and then later on they were seen as medicines or kindling or what have you. It's only very recently—in the past 40 years—that people have started to look at mummies in a different way and to treat them with respect. Taking mummies out of tombs is disturbing their rest.

On the other hand, if you put them in museums, take care of them, and remember to recite the name of the deceased, then they are, in fact, having the kind of afterlife they wanted, because the whole point of an afterlife is to be remembered. And they are now being remembered by everyone. For Egyptologist Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, mummies are a source of both information and inspiration: "It is quite remarkable to be able to touch the hand of a mummy, whether it's a king or not, and to try to envision the kind of life he or she led 3, or 4, years ago.

Present-day archaeologists and other specialists are adding to this knowledge. The development of x-rays now makes it possible to x-ray mummies without destroying the elaborate outer wrappings. By studying the x-rays or performing autopsies on unwrapped bodies, experts are learning more about diseases suffered by the Egyptians and their medical treatment. A better idea of average height and life span comes from studying the bones.

By learning their age at death, the order and dates of the Egyptian kings becomes a little clearer. Even ties of kinship in the royal line can be suggested by the striking similarities or dissimilarities in the skulls of pharaohs that followed one another.

Dead now for thousands of years, the mummy continues to speak to us. Ancient Egypt Egyptian Mummies. Process The mummification process took seventy days. Who Was Mummified After death, the pharaohs of Egypt usually were mummified and buried in elaborate tombs.

The Study of Mummies Today Ancient writers, modern scientists, and the mummies themselves all help us better understand the Egyptian mummification process and the culture in which it existed. Mummy Mask. Mummy Of Cat.

Smithsonian American Art Museum Mask. Fragment Of Mummy Coffin Cartonnage. Mummy Coffin Model Of Wood. Wood Mummy Mask. Piece Of Mummy Cartonnage. Shabti, Mummy Model Of Alabaster. Of Mummy Mask. Head Of Mummified Cat.

Mummy Of Cat, Wrapped Linen. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Inlay of mummy figure with human head. Mummy cases were New Kingdom boxes that fit between the mummy and the coffin. They were made in two styles: a box and lid like a coffin, or a box with doors in the back that laced closed. Mummy cases were made of cartonnage, a lightweight material made from waste papyrus and linen covered in plaster.

The cartonnage material allowed the case to be molded closely to the outline of the mummy; it was also a wonderful material to paint on. Mummy cases were elaborately decorated with a variety of religious elements. Early tombs were considered the eternal dwelling places of the deceased, and the earliest coffins resembled miniature homes in appearance. They were made of small pieces of local wood doweled together. By the Old Kingdom, coffins were rectangular boxes with flat lids.

They were painted and inscribed in hieroglyphs with four important features: the deceased's name and titles; a list of food offerings ; a false door through which the ka could pass; and eyes through which the deceased could see outside the coffin. The body was placed in the coffin on its left side, so its face would be directly lined up with the painted eyes on the coffin's side.

By the Middle Kingdom the coffin was considered a miniature tomb, and it was decorated with many of the items that had formerly adorned the walls of the tomb. The goddesses Isis and Nephthys were painted as guards at the head and foot of the coffin.

The inside floor of the coffin was painted with Nut, Isis, Osiris, or the Djed pillar Osiris's backbone. T he art of mummification was perfected in the Third Intermediate Period B.

Late Period , the Greek historian Herodotus documented the process:. Next, the flank is slit open. The cavity is then thoroughly cleansed and washed out. 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.