Chemical Residue Reveals Ancient Egyptians' Mummy-Making Mixtures
upstart writes:
Mummification specialists had distinct concoctions for specific parts of the body:
Scientists have unwrapped long-sought details of embalming practices that ancient Egyptians used to preserve dead bodies.
Clues came from analyses of chemical residue inside vessels from the only known Egyptian embalming workshop and nearby burial chambers. Mummification specialists who worked there concocted specific mixtures to embalm the head, wash the body, treat the liver and stomach, and prepare bandages that swathed the body, researchers report February 1 in Nature.
"Ancient Egyptian embalmers had extensive chemical knowledge and knew what substances to put on the skin to preserve it, even without knowing about bacteria and other microorganisms," Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, said at a January 31 news conference.
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