Mummies There is no denying a lot of us are interested in mummies. A very interesting find has been made, and it has to do with mummification. A mummy has been found in Egypt which is so old it predates the very first pharaoh. Even better is the fact scientists were able to discover what was used in the process. Some have debated the fact the Egyptians were the first to mummify. The mummy has been dated, and the experts think it is about 6,000 years old. When it was first found, it was believed it was a naturally preserved mummy, but further examination proved it had been mummified by human means. There have been a lot of horror movies about mummies. They have not only fascinated us, but they have also horrified us. When I was a kid the mummy movies used to scare the heck out of a lot of us. There was this dead person wrapped in decomposing bandages slowly creeping around with one stiff leg as he walked and one hand being held out like a claw, just waiting to snatch someone. I think the dark black and white film added to the horror. The most famous horror movie actors at the time were Boris Karloff who played the mummy and the Frankenstein monster and Bela Lugosi who played Dracula. He had turned down the role of the Frankenstein monster which Karloff took and which made Karloff famous. We have been taught to have respect for the remains of humans and the ancient Egyptians certainly had that respect. They would have been horrified to see what happened to those mummies in the 1800s. When the steam locomotive came into use there were mummies everywhere in Egypt and most of them were of lowly commoners. Since there wasn’t enough fuel for the steam engines in Egypt at the time, they decided to use mummies as fuel and they would put them into the fire on the engines to keep the engine powered. No one knows how many mummies were burned. So much for respecting human remains. If I asked you who created the first mummies would you say ancient Egypt? If you did you would be wrong because another race beat the Egyptians to it by over 1,000 years. The funny part of it is they weren’t even in Africa, but on the other side of the world in Peru and Chile. They were known as the Chinchorro culture. It is said they were hunter gatherers. It was long thought they did this 2,000 years ahead of the Egyptians, but due to the new discovery of an even older Egyptian mummy the date is now 1,000 years. The amazing part of this is they also removed the organs and cleaned the body cavities. They then packed the body with clay. They sewed the bodies closed and then painted them black and put wigs on their heads. Everyone in this culture got mummified not only those of higher cast. Why did they do this? No one knows the answer to this. One other thing which is strange, they cared for their dead, or they would not have gone to all this trouble, but when they buried them it was in a very shallow grave which even the wind could have exposed, since they live in the Atacama Desert. It is strange the Egyptians also mummified animals and millions of them. People have been interested in mummies for a long time and even the ancient Greeks were interested in the subject. The ancient Egyptians had three different methods for creating mummies. The more expensive method was used by the rich and there was a lesser method used by the middle class, but the poor were not left out, because there was even a lesser expensive way for them. Of course, the most expensive method produced the best preservation and the least expensive method was equivalent to embalming and after a few days the family got the body back to take care of it. Mummies have been found in many places. Some are preserved naturally and some on purpose. A mummy was found in a cave in Libya. The mummy was of an infant and the cave had been occupied, as evidenced by drawings on the walls. When the infant mummy was examined, a cut was discovered which was used to remove the internal organs. The baby had been mummified on purpose, and herbs put into the body cavity. The baby was wearing a neckless and carefully wrapped in animal skins. The age of the infant was about 2.5 years old, and the corpse was said to be between 5,000 to 8,000 years old. Mummification seemed to have started somewhere around 9,000 years ago, and continued for many thousands of years. We might even find it started before that. A mummy was found in South Africa which was only about 2,000 years old. There have been quite a few mummies found in China, but they were not prepared, they were natural. The most famous is the mummy of Xin Zhui. Some call her Lady Dai. She lived during the Han dynasty. She was buried with other bodies, but only her body became mummified. It is said she looks like she is sleeping. Why was this woman so perfectly preserved? No one knows the answer to that yet. Even her last meal was still in her stomach. As the glaciers recede, things start to come out of them, and one of those things was the remains of the famous mummy Ötzi the iceman. He is a mummy which is thought to be 5,300 years old and was of great interest to science. His preservation was an accident of nature, but we learned a lot from it because of the things he carried, and what he ate. When a genetic test was performed on him it was found he had relatives alive today living in Austria. When he died he was suffering from a lot of maladies including worms. He had what was considered a very expensive copper axe in his possession. People walking by had seen his body sticking out of the ice. Why are we so fascinated by mummies? Could it be because it seems to show those mummied which were created on purpose were created out of love? After all it is nice to know even our ancient ancestors cared for each other and wanted to get their relatives and friends into the afterlife.
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