Egypt
Suite 101 (Jenn Ostrowski)
See the above page for more uses of ancient Egyptian mummies. These stories never cease to make my hair stand on end.
- Exhibition: Unwrapping The Medical Messages Of Mummies
swissinfo.ch (Thomas Stephens) Bandaged corpses are so much more than fodder for dodgy Hollywood horror films. An exhibition in Zurich explains what they can tell us about our own health. “Mummies, men, medicine, magic”, running at Zurich University’s...
- Crocodile Mummies Scanned At Stanford
Scope (Lia Steakley) With photos. Conservators at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley are in the midst of reviewing CT images of a pair of crocodile mummies, which were scanned at Stanford last week. The crocodiles, a wrapped mummy with a painted...
- In The Lab: Albany Mummies
Legislative Gazette Modern technology and ongoing research have unraveled mysteries about the two "Albany Mummies" that have been on display since 1909 at the Albany Institute of History and Art. To celebrate this 100 year milestone, the institute will...
- Mmmm, Yummy ... Mummies!
guardian.co.ukNowadays, powdered mummy may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for many years it was just what the doctor ordered. That's one of the takeaway messages of Richard Sugg's study Good Physic but Bad Food: Early Modern Attitudes to...
- Many Ancient Cultures Practiced Mummification
http://www.gdherald.com/articles/2005/10/25/news/news04.txt"Many ancient cultures practiced mummification . . . . Mummies have been found in the Middle East, Andes mountains of South America, Peruvian desert, western China and parts of Scandinavia. The...
Egypt
Egyptian mummies as commodities
Suite 101 (Jenn Ostrowski)
From medicine to entertainment, many ancient Egyptians did not get the peace they sought after death despite their efforts to preserve their dead.
Ancient Egyptians believed that after death their souls would survive, and that those souls would reanimate their bodies. This led to the need to preserve the deceased for the afterlife, but it’s doubtful the Egyptians ever fathomed the many other uses for their mummies.
Mummies as Medicine
Shipped across the Mediterranean Sea to apothecaries in large quantities, mummies were incorrectly assumed by Europeans to be embalmed with a type of bitumen (a black tar-like substance) believed to have healing properties in Asian tradition. Most mummies, in fact, were not coated with bitumen but dark resins, which lent to the dark tone of a mummy’s skin.
From the 1100s until opinions changed in the 1700s, powdered or chopped up pieces of a mummy were considered a cure for many different health problems, including diseases, poisoning, open wounds, and even broken bones. Mixed with other ingredients or used straight, mummy medicine became a popular drug in the West. King Francis I of France even took powdered mummy with rhubarb daily.
When Egyptian mummies became hard to acquire, a new market for the dearly departed opened up. Merchants substituted the corpses of slaves and others, “embalming” the bodies themselves and marketing them as genuine mummies.
See the above page for more uses of ancient Egyptian mummies. These stories never cease to make my hair stand on end.
- Exhibition: Unwrapping The Medical Messages Of Mummies
swissinfo.ch (Thomas Stephens) Bandaged corpses are so much more than fodder for dodgy Hollywood horror films. An exhibition in Zurich explains what they can tell us about our own health. “Mummies, men, medicine, magic”, running at Zurich University’s...
- Crocodile Mummies Scanned At Stanford
Scope (Lia Steakley) With photos. Conservators at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley are in the midst of reviewing CT images of a pair of crocodile mummies, which were scanned at Stanford last week. The crocodiles, a wrapped mummy with a painted...
- In The Lab: Albany Mummies
Legislative Gazette Modern technology and ongoing research have unraveled mysteries about the two "Albany Mummies" that have been on display since 1909 at the Albany Institute of History and Art. To celebrate this 100 year milestone, the institute will...
- Mmmm, Yummy ... Mummies!
guardian.co.ukNowadays, powdered mummy may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for many years it was just what the doctor ordered. That's one of the takeaway messages of Richard Sugg's study Good Physic but Bad Food: Early Modern Attitudes to...
- Many Ancient Cultures Practiced Mummification
http://www.gdherald.com/articles/2005/10/25/news/news04.txt"Many ancient cultures practiced mummification . . . . Mummies have been found in the Middle East, Andes mountains of South America, Peruvian desert, western China and parts of Scandinavia. The...