Mummy Facts
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Did you know. . . 1. Mummy is an Arabic word for "bitumen" – a sort of tar that was
precious as a medicine. The Arabs were the first people of modern times to discover mummies and they thought they were covered in bitumen. 2. Egyptians believed that one day the world would end. When it did
they would move on to their afterlife. To make that long journey they would need their earthly body. If their body was allowed to rot then they wouldn't be able to go.
3. The men who made dead bodies into mummies were called embalmers. They took the bodies to a place they called the Beautiful House to work on them. The Beautiful House was more like a butcher's shop.
4. At first only the very rich could afford embalming. Later it became a huge industry with even the poorest hoping for it. 5. The climate of Egypt is naturally
6. The human body is made up of 75%
water. Anything wet or damp rots very quickly – and dead people in the fierce Egyptian heat were no exception. Something was needed to soak up all the body fluids. At
first the embalmers used sand, but this left the skin very tight. Later, the embalmers discovered that natron, a salty chemical found around the sides of lakes near Cairo, did a better job. It left the
person looking more like they did when they were alive. 7. Sometimes the embalmers made mistakes and a body was badly mummified. It would turn dark and brittle and bits would break off!
If part of a body rotted and fell off – or was snatched by a jackal taking a quick snack when no one was looking – the embalmers replaced it with a wad of linen, or a piece of wood. If the person had
a limb missing when they were alive the embalmers gave them a wooden one ready for use in the next world. 8. Archaeologists have found mummies wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen, up to 20 layers thick.
9. Examination of mummies showed a lot about the bodies when they were alive. Ramses II had a lot of
10. In Victorian England people flocked to see a mummy being unwrapped! Doctor Pettigrew at the Royal College of Surgeons provided very popular unwrappings. Even on a bitterly cold January
night, tickets were sold out and many important people could not get in. Not even the Archbishop of Canterbury! Refreshments were served after the "performance," just as if it were a theater show.
One of Pettigrew's mummies turned out to be a fake – rags and sticks wrapped up in bandages. 11. The Duke of Hamilton was very impressed by "Mummy" Pettigrew's work. He asked to be mummified by Pettigrew after he
died. After 20 years of unwrapping mummies Pettigrew finally had the chance to wrap one. This he did after the Duke died on August 18, 1852. The Duke even had an ancient Egyptian stone coffin waiting
for his body. It hasn't been opened since, so we don't know if Pettigrew was as good at making mummies as the Egyptians. 12. When the Egyptians became Christians and later, Muslims, they no
longer believed that you needed your earthly body to survive in the afterlife. They didn't need their mummies anymore.
good for preserving a body. A poor peasant died 5,000 years ago
and his body was covered by the dry desert sand. It is more perfectly preserved than many mummies and can be seen in the British Museum today. His nickname is Ginger.
blackheads on his face, while
Ramses III had been a very fat man. King Sequenenre II had met a pretty horrible end. There were wounds on his scalp – one wound had pierced his skull. Blood was still clotted in his hair, and his
face was twisted in agony. Some think he was murdered in his sleep – others believe he was killed in battle. If so, he may have been mummified quickly, so his hair wasn't cleaned well.
Some Unusual (But True!) Uses for Mummies . . .
Mummified Cats
Ancient Egyptians mummified
animals - such as cats
1. As magic powder King Charles II of England (1630 – 1685) used to collect the dust and powder that fell
from collections of mummies. He would rub this powder into his skin, all over. He believed that the "ancient greatness" of the mummies would rub on to him. 2. As fuel
So many mummies were dug up in the 1800's that they became common and worthless. Some were burned as fuel for steam trains when wood and coal were short supply. Poor people in Thebes used
the bandages to heat their ovens. 3. As ornaments A display case with the hand or foot of a mummy became a very popular ornament for Victorian mantelpieces. 4. In witchcraft
William Shakespeare knew about it; "mummy" is an ingredient in the Witches' Brew in the play, MacBeth.
5. In painting
Sixteen-century artists believed that adding powdered mummy to their paint would stop it from cracking when it dried. 6. As medicine From the early 13th century AD till well into the 17th
century, Egyptian mummies were chopped up and fed to sick people as a cure. It was used for people with all sorts of diseases, as well as broken bones and as a cure for poisoning. So many mummies had left Egypt
by the late 16th century that the Egytian mummy-sellers then made fake mummies out of any bodies laying around! ( A French visitor reported seeing 40 fake mummies in a mummy factory.)
7. The English scientists, Sir Marc Armand Ruffer, thought he could learn about the diseases of ancient Egypt by testing bits of mummies. He found the Egyptians suffered many of the diseases we do today.
8. In paper making Paper made from cloth (rag paper) has always been valued as high-quality paper. A traveling Egyptian tribe called the Bedouin
would steal mummies and sell them to paper-making factories. The American paper-manufacturer,
Augustus Stanwood, was still importing mummies at the end of the 19th
century to turn the bandages into paper. The stained bandages made poor writing paper but was fine for brown paper. It was sold to butcher and grocers as wrapping paper. An outbreak of the deadly disease,
cholera, was traced to the mummy bandages, so the scheme was stopped. Several people died . . . the mummies' revenge?