January 20, 2014 • 28 mins
So how did Ancient Egyptians actually embalm their dead? Thanks in large part to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, we have some great descriptions of what happened to the deceased.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We're going
a little more bid today, literally quite uh. So everyone
(00:22):
knows what a mummy looks like. You've seen him, probably
in a museum. They're featured in movies, they have been
popular Halloween costumes for decades, and most people know a
little bit about how mummification was performed. I think most
people will remember hearing about organs being removed, brains being
extracted through the nose. That's usually the first thing someone
(00:43):
will spit out if you mentioned mummification. That was the
first thing I spit out when you mentioned mummifications. So
my husband, that was the first thing he said, Oh,
they pulled the brains out through the nose. But there
are a lot of other details to the process, and
that full picture of what all goes on is almost
ever really taught in school, and it's certainly not talked
about a lot because it gets into a lot of minutia. So, uh,
(01:07):
that got me thinking about how did ancient Egyptians actually involved.
They're dead and thanks in large part to Herodotus and
Diodora siculous. We actually have some really good descriptions of
what happened to the deceased um. But in this episode,
just to set up expectations, we're not focusing on the
tumbes and the pyramids and like how pharaohs necessarily related
(01:28):
to rest. We're talking about just embalming and mummification of
you know, the general populace of Egypt, although there there
are social strata levels and financial levels to it. Uh.
And we also want to throw out a quick warning,
so some of this, as you might guess, gets a
little bit graphic. So if you are sensitive to semi
gory anatomy talk, or you're listening with a younger history
(01:51):
buff who might not, you know, necessarily be ready for
this topic, you might want to either skip it or
give it a quick pre screen, uh for any younger ones,
just to make you're you're cool with them hearing what
we have to say. I guess that's some of It's
a little little graphic. We lucky if you're sensitive to it.
The account written by Herodotus describes the whole pre mummification
(02:12):
process while the household is grieving over the recently deceased person,
and upon the death of a distinguished man, according to
Herodotus writings, all of the women of the household would
mud themselves. They would cover themselves with mud, and they
would walk through town beating their bare breasts as part
of the show of morning. And men would also do
(02:33):
the same thing, also beating themselves on the chest. And
there was also a girdle wearing involved. Uh. And then
when this processional was over, that's when they would take
the body to be mummified. If a woman had died,
if she was the wife of an honorable man, or
was especially beautiful or well known, her body would be
held by the family for several days prior to being embalmed.
(02:55):
And according to Herodotus, this was to protect the body
from being vile related by the embombers, which was either
apparently a problem or a suspected problem. Yeah, they were
either very afraid of necrophilia going on or it sounds
like in that writing that there is one instance of
(03:16):
it happening, but it's still not clear whether it was
a rumor or actually took place, but it was a
very real fear. Uh. And then in the case of
people who were found either killed by a nile, crocodile,
or drowned in the river. They got a whole sort
of different approach, which is that their bodies were handled
in the absolutely most elaborate mantal manner. They can only
(03:38):
be touched by priests of the nile, like not even
their relatives were allowed to touch the deceased. Uh. And
these corpses were handled as though they were quote more
sacred than the body of a man, because they, you know,
esteemed the nile so much. If the nile is how
you died, you sort of got automatically a higher level. Now,
when I was relaying this piece of information to my
(03:58):
husband on the to work today, he immediately began to postulate, well,
what would happen, Like, maybe somebody in your family died
in a really nefarious way. Could you throw up in
the nile and fake it and give them an honor
of super honorable um burial as a consequence. I do
not know, But in case any of our listeners had
(04:19):
a similar question, I just wanted to mention that I
have no idea that we don't know. So once the
family had finished their initial grieving ritual, they would turn
the body over to the embalmer, and the process of
preserving the body was extremely important because Ka, which is
the person's spiritual entity, would not be able to come
(04:40):
back to a body that was decayed. Right, So, as
we know, without getting too deep into the religious aspect
of it, because we're focusing really on how bodies were handled. Uh.
You know, in Egypt, they believed that your your soul,
some form of your soul, would come back to you
in the afterlife. That's why they wanted to prepare everyone.
And so if you if your body was handled poorly,
(05:02):
it would be a much more difficult or unlikely process
for you to have a good afterlife. It's a sort
of common idea and a lot of religions that that
if the body has been desecrated or destroyed in some way,
that it's going to affect the afterlife of the person
who died. Uh. And then once the family would take
(05:25):
the body to um, the embalmer's much the same way
that a modern mortician would go over options for various
aspects of burial ceremonies with clients. The involmer would actually
show the deceased family normally three specimens of their work,
and they would each be at a different quality and
price level, and these were described by Herodotus as the
(05:45):
quote three classes of burial, the most expensive, the medium,
and the most humble. And once the class of embalming
was decided upon and all the details were worked out,
then the ebolmer would set to work, so sort of
like planning funeral today. Yeah. The body's first stop was
the place of purification, and there the corpse would be
(06:05):
watched with natron, which is a hydrous native sodium carbonate.
And next the washed body would be taken to the
quote house of beauty for actual mummification. And they're the
man that was deemed the overseer of Mysteries, who is
usually a follower of a Nubis, was assisted by a
priest of Osiris in the actual mummification process. The Overseer
(06:28):
of Mysteries would do this work according to the pricing
structure that had been agreed upon when the family first
brought the deceased in. Right. So first we're going to
run down the most involved process, which was called the
most perfect process. And this involves steps that are probably
familiar to people to some degree, because this is really
(06:49):
what most people talk about or they hear about snippets
of in history class brains through the nose, so starting
with the extraction of the brain matter through the nostrils
using according to her Rodotus, was an iron hook uh,
and there was iron being used in Egypt at the time,
but there have also been some questions about that. Uh.
The residue that the hook was unable to clear away
(07:10):
would be rinsed out with what is referred to in
several in the sources as drugs, and presumably that was
something with a cleaning agent in it. That there's still
some question marks about what the drugs were, something that
would help remove brain matter early on in this process.
There were also two men involved. You had kind of
(07:31):
odd jobs. Yeah. I when I was doing research on this,
I I am Tracy and said, I just found the
two worst jobs in ancient Egypt's history. Yeah, first was
not quite as bad. That was the scribe, and the
scribe would mark the left side of the deceased body
where the incision would be made, and then a second man,
(07:51):
who was called the slitter, would make the cut to
open the abdominal cavity. And according to the first century
d cee Greek historian Diodora Siculous, who we mentioned earlier.
The slitter would then be he would have to take
off running because he would be set upon by everyone
present and they would curse him and throw rocks at him.
(08:13):
And this was actually a ritualized thing. Uh. This was
all part of the natural Egyptian belief that anyone who
would perform violence on a human body was horrible and
should be hated. Uh. But somebody had to do it.
So this was the slitter's job, sort of to be
professionally hated, and not exactly the best job there was
(08:37):
because it was like, hey, great job, now we're going
to beat you. Um. We don't know for sure how
much the scribe got of this treatment. We do know
that the person who actually performed the cut really kind
of got uh, had a rough day at the office.
At this point, the embombers could start their task free
of the stigma of having been the ones to wound
(08:59):
the boy. The rest of their work was considered reparative
and sacred, So the abdomen would then be emptied and
thoroughly cleaned and washed, and the removed viscero would also
be washed. And this washing was done via first rinsing
the area or the viscera with palm wine and then
rinsing it again with an infusion of pounded spices. The
(09:21):
cavity was filled with natron, then it was sown shut
and at this point the body was also placed in
natron for seventy days. There's actually some scholarly debate about
whether it was a shorter period, and that could stem
in from a change in the type of natron that
was used in earlier embalming. The natron was used in
a liquid state from the Middle Kingdom on, though it
(09:45):
seems like a solid natron salt was used and this
would result in a faster desiccation of the body. Yes,
so the the there The other number that you'll sometimes
here is forty days, so we know it's somewhere in
there um. And there are also a few factors that
would change the results of the natron treatment and how
(10:05):
long it would take, and that include the quality of
the mix, uh of the natron, the condition of the
body prior to embolving, as you can well imagine whether
the natron had been used before, because it would sometimes
be reused and it would get less and less effective
with each use. You have to also consider the ratio
of natron to body volume. And the climatic conditions of
(10:28):
the area. Obviously, if it's a more human space, it's
going to take longer for the body to dry out.
This is basically drying the body out, getting all the
water out, and that's gonna prevent bacteria and things from
breaking down the tissue or at least slow it down dramatically.
(10:48):
After this two months soak, the temporary stuffing materials would
be removed and the body would be washed again, and
once the abdomen was thoroughly cleaned, it was refilled with
aromatic substances. Then this could include Cassia, juniper, and mirror
as well as other things, and they these substances all
smelled nice, but they also preserved the body and they
(11:10):
prevented the abdominal wall from collapsing. And additional materials that
could be used to fill the abdominal cavity could be resin,
which also works as a disinfectant. They would use oils,
hung winds and perfumes kind of fill it out and
keep it as clean as possible in the afterlife and
also keep it from smelling horrible. Yeah. A side note
(11:31):
in case you've always wondered but didn't know, mirr is
a gum resin that comes from a tree and it
smells really sweet. Cassia is a course cinnamon bark, which
of course also has a very sweet smell. And then
uh they would also pour hot resin onto the body
in a thin layer and that would serve as a disinfectant.
(11:51):
So several different steps steps were being taken to prevent
any sort of bacteria, any sort of moisture that could
lead to um additional breakdown of the tissue preservation. From
this point, the corpse could have any kind of cosmetic
dressing that was going to be done, and this could
include dying and styling the hair, including adding heron's extensions
(12:14):
and applying colored pigments to the face. And then it
was at this point that the corpse would be wrapped
in the linen strips that we have the visual association
with of what a mummy looks like, and you adhere
these strips to the body. The underside was treated with
gum and then specialists, basically people whose only job was
working as a bandager, would perform this rapping. The digits
(12:36):
of the hands and the feet would be wrapped individually,
and then the rest of the body would be wrapped
and a red linen shroud would cover the body after
their wrapping was finished, and throughout each stage of this
process there would be a lector priest that would read
magical texts over the body, and protective amulets would be
placed at various locations around the neck and limbs, sometimes
(12:57):
around the waist and as well as tucked into the
layers of wrapping as they got to the final stages.
Once the corpse was fully prepared in this manner, it
would go back to the family and sometime during the
two plus months that the body had been with the embalmers,
the family would have acquired a wooden human shaped shell
that the body would go back into, and it would
(13:18):
be put in this box and then normally UH and again,
since this is the highest level UH, that box would
be stored upright in like a family sepulchral chamber. So
that is the most perfect process, yes, where everything is
done with great care, and there are many many steps
before we move on to the somewhat perhaps less perfect process.
(13:42):
You like to take a moment and talk about our sponsor.
That sounds grand, So let's get back to what the
maybe families of a little more modest means might have done. Yeah,
the most modest means, but slightly more modin Yes, this
is this is like the mid grade quality offication exactly. Uh.
And this mid range treatment of Egypt's dead was, as
(14:04):
you might suspect, a bit less involved. They did not
take as much time perform as many steps. So rather
than taking the body's organs out, as was the practice
and the most expensive option, instead what would happen is
that embalmers would inject oil of cedar into the body
through the anal opening, which would then be sealed, and
(14:26):
this body that was now full of oil would be
soaked in netron for seventy or forty days depending or
somewhere in between. And after this soak was complete, they
would drain the oil from the body. They would um
unseal the anial opening, and then the cedar oil will
have liquefied the internal organs and so everything would sort
(14:46):
of flesh out at once. At this point, the body
was really depleted down to nothing but the skin and
the skeleton, and that's how it would be returned to
the deceased family without any kind of additional treatment. So uh,
not so much with the wrapping in the actual mummification
just an embalming process that was thorough but not as involved.
(15:06):
And then for the poor, we have an extremely basic
level of it of embalming. Yeah. So they would cut
open the body and remove the intestines, but it was
pretty quick. It wasn't careful, it wasn't all the intestines
were not washed. They still stoning the person, whomandicut I
would presume because the body was still considered sacred, although
(15:28):
I didn't find anything that separated Uh, those two instances
like that specified only in the highest and most perfect
level versus this. But they would flush the abdominal cavity
with alcohol and they would then soak the body in
natron for seventy days or less. Uh, But then that
was it. So after the neatron soak and it came out,
(15:49):
they gave it a quick rince and then it went
back to the family or sometimes in the case of
a popper that had no family, the embalmers would bury it.
Not so much with the tomb and the beautiful everything.
But what we have not talked about, and I'm sure
people are going hey. In fact, I was like hey,
in a moment that we cut out of this podcast
earlier why didn't you mention why didn't we talk about
(16:12):
the organs that came out of the bodies and the
jars that they went into, which are another thing that
probably if you've been to any kind of mummy display
in a museum, you've seen a lot of uh So,
the first thing that I found interesting in my research
is that brains were not particularly sacred to the ancient Egyptians.
Uh So, in this process, the brain was often cut
(16:33):
into smaller pieces to facilitate the removal and pulling it
out through the nasal cavity most of the time, uh
and brain matter was usually discarded. It was not treated
with the care of other parts of the body well.
And according to the beliefs in this culture, all of
your important stuff was in your heart and not your brain.
That kind of makes sense. Um. In nineteen sixty nine,
(16:56):
the Egyptian skulls that are part of the macalister collection
at Cambridge University were studied to figure out how the
brain was handled in each sample, and the findings support
this idea of the brain just not being regarded as important,
and there had often been holes drilled into the skulls
to help remove brain tissue and brain tissue often remained
(17:17):
inside the skull, suggesting that embombers were not incredibly thorough
and painstaking, at least not as much as they were
with other organs. Right, And there uh isn't actually any
information on how the viscera was handled after being removed
from the body in the writings of Herodotus and Diodorus,
(17:37):
who we've talked about a lot, but thankfully archaeology has
kind of filled in the blanks. And this is an
aspect of the process which actually evolved and changed over time.
It wasn't always done the same way. So if you
were waiting for the canopic jar talk, here we go.
In the late period, which was from the six sixties
until the three thirties, the viscera would be placed into
(17:59):
four canopic jars. And the earlier examples of these jars
are kind of plain, but later on they are very
ornamental jars and they represent the sons of Horace. So
jars with the human headed Mseti usually held the liver.
Then there was Happy who had a bamboon head and
that held the lungs. Do Amutef had the head of
(18:21):
a jackal and held the stomach, and then the intestines
were held by k base enough which had the head
of a falcon, and these were normally placed in the
tomb along with the body. And in the Hellenistic period
roughly from the three twenties to the thirties b c e.
The practice of handling the viscera shifted a little bit,
(18:41):
and then organs were normally placed into wooden chests or
sometimes set between the body's legs prior to the bandaging process,
and in some mommies from this time the organs have
actually been found, treated and washed and preserved and then
returned to the deceased abdominal cavity. When e Ship became
part of the Roman Empire and thirty one BC, mummification
(19:04):
practices shifted again and it became common for bodies to
be coated with resin to prevent decay instead of using
this longer and more involved process. But during late Antiquity
some bodies were simply treated with natron and then they
would be dressed in their regular clothes again rather than
wrapped in bandages, so they really sort of had cutbacks,
(19:25):
kind of got a little less intricate and ceremonial as
they went. It's time progressed, so not everything went into jars,
obviously because you have more than four organs. Despite the
clearing out of the abdomen and the trunk that we
mentioned earlier, the heart would be left in the body
and it was believed that it would be weighed in
(19:46):
the afterlife as part of the judgment of the dead,
and the kidneys were also often left, although we are
a little less clear on why that is the case. Uh.
In a paper on surgical procedures performed during mummifications that
was written by Bob or In ronaldust Wade Uh, the
pair point out that there's no real Middle Egyptian word
(20:06):
for kidney. There are some that kind of hints at it,
but no specific word, and they suggest that maybe ancient
Egyptians were entirely clear on this aspect of human anatomy.
It's also worth noting that when canopic jars are being
used in the late period, there were, as we said,
only four way more than four internal organs are in
the human body, so it appears that dissection was never
(20:30):
done in Egypt until the late Ptolemaic times, so it
makes sense that they may not have had a full
picture of the inner workings of a man. So even
though they were going in and removing organs, they had
not done sort of an exploratory correct surgical uh look
at the whole human body, which makes sense since cutting
(20:50):
into the body was a taboo, right. Uh. And it's
also worth noting that the incision that they were using
for removing these organs was only about two and a
half inches long, really just enough for one of these
embalming experts to get their hand in to remove things,
so they were really feeling around in the dark. Yeah. Well,
and if if you've watched an actual autopsy video or
(21:15):
any kind of like human anatomy study video involving an
actual body, or you know, if you've actually been in
on one of those, it's it's not as neat and
tidy in there as it is depicted when something has
been like prepared for classroom use or on television or whatever.
It's kind of like a big mass of blade goop
(21:37):
in there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's uh not
to make light of it being a human, but it
reminds me of the Halloween trick where people take you
in the dark room and have you feel things in
a bowl that are wet and slimy, and if you
think about a lot of those kinds of things in
one big bowl and you have to get around and go,
that's a I think that's intestine. I mean, it would
(21:58):
be very hard to just identify by touch, even if
you were very experienced, because there's it's all moving and squishy.
It's not for the most part, you're not going to find,
like you know, clear edges. This is definitely Some scholars
do argue that the Egyptians had so much experience with
the practice of removing organs that there must have been
(22:21):
some more meaningful aspect to the kidney issue, but we
don't really know what that is yet. Yeah, there are
several theories. Some are very simple and it's like, well,
there's usually too much fatty tissue and it would have
been hard to remove other shade they didn't even know
they were there. But we haven't found any cultural evidence
of any import to the kidney. So we, like them,
are feeling around in the dark trying to figure out
(22:42):
what the scoop was. Suddenly I'm like cadaver study. That's
the word that I was starting to find. An earlier
a mummification appears to have ended for the most part
around the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in
the seventh century, and by that time it's estimated that
around seven thirty million people had been embalmed in ancient Egypt. Yeah,
(23:03):
they're considered the first embalmers. Uh, and they really you know,
it's a fascinating practice. The great depths, especially if you're
looking at the most perfect practice that they used. Uh,
it's a lot of really intricate steps and with such
reverence for the body. Yeah, it's quite um, it's quite
something to think about. Well, and like I know when
(23:25):
I learned about this in elementary school or whatever, the
focus was kind of whoo freaky, ran to the news,
But really it's got a lot in common with normal
funeral rituals in the West today. Like it's still about
preserving the body for as long as possible and having
a respectful uh form to return to the family in
(23:48):
some way, like for a service before it's buried, that
kind of thing. So there's they paved the way. There's
more in common than woe freaky. Yeah, burial cultures in
a lot of places. To me, that's sort of like
the I understand that the woe freaky part is what
often gets kids interested in things like this. Yeah, I'm
(24:09):
super excited about it, especially when it's kind of an
icky topic, and you know, teachers may need for their
their own sort of sanity to build that bridge of like,
look at this freaky thing, and it makes it less
scary because we uh, I know, certainly in the West
and of many other cultures there's still a lot of
taboo about death and talking about the dead and dead
bodies specifically. Uh that that's sort of I think helps
(24:32):
if we focus on the freaky part, particularly in a
learning situation, kind of makes it a little easier for everybody.
And kids love gross things of course as as a trend,
but it does it misses out on all of that
beautiful nuance and subtlety. And I, prior to researching this,
did not know about the practice of not turning over
a woman's body for several days out of fear that
(24:54):
it would be violated in some way. That was all
new information for me. So there are a lot of
these things that we don't ever hear about. Yeah, And
I think even including in today's episode, I've never heard
anything about any kind of different treatment for a woman's organs,
which are not the same as a man's organs internally,
(25:15):
Like I've never heard any Uterus ovary like what happened
with those discussed in any way? Ever? Uh, they certainly,
to the best of our knowledge, did not usually end
up in a jar. So there's always more stuff to learn.
I know, maybe someone knows and we'll write us a letter.
I'll tell us some some cool obscure thing that we
(25:38):
haven't learned. You are an Egyptologist, you should write us
for sure. Speaking of letters, I think you have some.
I have to both kind of short and one made
me giggle. Uh. So the first one is from our
listener Stephanie, and she says, I just recently discovered the podcast,
and I was super excited when I saw an episode
about Sarah Edmonds. So really, this is a praise Tracy
moment because that was her choice. Uh. Sarah, she as
(26:00):
an ant on my mother's side and kind of a
point of pride for our family. There is a monument
to her influence Michigan erected in the ninety nineties. Thank
you guys so much for doing a podcast on her.
My mom and grandpa were super excited to hear about it.
Awesome that's so cool. I always love when people write
in and they're related to someone that we talked about, her,
someone in the story that we talked about, or recently
(26:21):
when the plane was landing and they could see us
out the wind. I love those. It's you know how
history stays alive day to day. And the second one
is from our listener, Julia, and she says, I'm so
happy I recently found your podcast. I live in New
York City, and my long commute to work on the
subway is now a lot more interesting as I listen
to your back episodes. I hope you enjoyed this discussion
of death. Julia uh. She goes on to say, since
(26:44):
you always mentioned Pinterest at the end of the podcast,
I was curious to see what you're both pinning. I
plugged missed in History into the pinner search and got
this message. We couldn't find any results for missed in History,
but you might try holidays, corgy sneakers, or passa. I'm
not sure holidays, quarky sneakers, and pasta have to do
with the podcast, but perhaps I'll figure it out as
(27:04):
I continue to listen. Thank you for the always fascinating topics.
I can't wait to see what you two have planned
for the new year. It's funny you should say that
we have actually just moved our Pinterest, so it should
be much easier to find. Uh. It was a board
under the main house stuff works Pinterest, and now we've
moved it off to our own individual Pinterest account with
(27:26):
lots and lots of boards of our own. So if
you search for us now, we should come up and
search and if you just want to go there and
check it out, we are at pinterest dot com slash
missed in history, so it's much easier for us to
tell other people about Also, so you would like to
find our Pinterest again, that is pinterest dot com slash
missed in History. We're also on Twitter at missed in
(27:49):
history and on Facebook at a new U r L
which is Facebook dot com slash missed in history. Uh.
And our email address that one still the same. That
is History Podcast at Discovery dot com. If you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our website and do a search
for the term embalming and you will get how embalming works,
which does touch on ancient Egypt in the first embalmers.
(28:12):
If you'd like to learn almost anything else your brain
can conjure, you can do that at our website as well.
And that's how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We're going
a little more bid today, literally quite uh. So everyone
(00:22):
knows what a mummy looks like. You've seen him, probably
in a museum. They're featured in movies, they have been
popular Halloween costumes for decades, and most people know a
little bit about how mummification was performed. I think most
people will remember hearing about organs being removed, brains being
extracted through the nose. That's usually the first thing someone
(00:43):
will spit out if you mentioned mummification. That was the
first thing I spit out when you mentioned mummifications. So
my husband, that was the first thing he said, Oh,
they pulled the brains out through the nose. But there
are a lot of other details to the process, and
that full picture of what all goes on is almost
ever really taught in school, and it's certainly not talked
about a lot because it gets into a lot of minutia. So, uh,
(01:07):
that got me thinking about how did ancient Egyptians actually involved.
They're dead and thanks in large part to Herodotus and
Diodora siculous. We actually have some really good descriptions of
what happened to the deceased um. But in this episode,
just to set up expectations, we're not focusing on the
tumbes and the pyramids and like how pharaohs necessarily related
(01:28):
to rest. We're talking about just embalming and mummification of
you know, the general populace of Egypt, although there there
are social strata levels and financial levels to it. Uh.
And we also want to throw out a quick warning,
so some of this, as you might guess, gets a
little bit graphic. So if you are sensitive to semi
gory anatomy talk, or you're listening with a younger history
(01:51):
buff who might not, you know, necessarily be ready for
this topic, you might want to either skip it or
give it a quick pre screen, uh for any younger ones,
just to make you're you're cool with them hearing what
we have to say. I guess that's some of It's
a little little graphic. We lucky if you're sensitive to it.
The account written by Herodotus describes the whole pre mummification
(02:12):
process while the household is grieving over the recently deceased person,
and upon the death of a distinguished man, according to
Herodotus writings, all of the women of the household would
mud themselves. They would cover themselves with mud, and they
would walk through town beating their bare breasts as part
of the show of morning. And men would also do
(02:33):
the same thing, also beating themselves on the chest. And
there was also a girdle wearing involved. Uh. And then
when this processional was over, that's when they would take
the body to be mummified. If a woman had died,
if she was the wife of an honorable man, or
was especially beautiful or well known, her body would be
held by the family for several days prior to being embalmed.
(02:55):
And according to Herodotus, this was to protect the body
from being vile related by the embombers, which was either
apparently a problem or a suspected problem. Yeah, they were
either very afraid of necrophilia going on or it sounds
like in that writing that there is one instance of
(03:16):
it happening, but it's still not clear whether it was
a rumor or actually took place, but it was a
very real fear. Uh. And then in the case of
people who were found either killed by a nile, crocodile,
or drowned in the river. They got a whole sort
of different approach, which is that their bodies were handled
in the absolutely most elaborate mantal manner. They can only
(03:38):
be touched by priests of the nile, like not even
their relatives were allowed to touch the deceased. Uh. And
these corpses were handled as though they were quote more
sacred than the body of a man, because they, you know,
esteemed the nile so much. If the nile is how
you died, you sort of got automatically a higher level. Now,
when I was relaying this piece of information to my
(03:58):
husband on the to work today, he immediately began to postulate, well,
what would happen, Like, maybe somebody in your family died
in a really nefarious way. Could you throw up in
the nile and fake it and give them an honor
of super honorable um burial as a consequence. I do
not know, But in case any of our listeners had
(04:19):
a similar question, I just wanted to mention that I
have no idea that we don't know. So once the
family had finished their initial grieving ritual, they would turn
the body over to the embalmer, and the process of
preserving the body was extremely important because Ka, which is
the person's spiritual entity, would not be able to come
(04:40):
back to a body that was decayed. Right, So, as
we know, without getting too deep into the religious aspect
of it, because we're focusing really on how bodies were handled. Uh.
You know, in Egypt, they believed that your your soul,
some form of your soul, would come back to you
in the afterlife. That's why they wanted to prepare everyone.
And so if you if your body was handled poorly,
(05:02):
it would be a much more difficult or unlikely process
for you to have a good afterlife. It's a sort
of common idea and a lot of religions that that
if the body has been desecrated or destroyed in some way,
that it's going to affect the afterlife of the person
who died. Uh. And then once the family would take
(05:25):
the body to um, the embalmer's much the same way
that a modern mortician would go over options for various
aspects of burial ceremonies with clients. The involmer would actually
show the deceased family normally three specimens of their work,
and they would each be at a different quality and
price level, and these were described by Herodotus as the
(05:45):
quote three classes of burial, the most expensive, the medium,
and the most humble. And once the class of embalming
was decided upon and all the details were worked out,
then the ebolmer would set to work, so sort of
like planning funeral today. Yeah. The body's first stop was
the place of purification, and there the corpse would be
(06:05):
watched with natron, which is a hydrous native sodium carbonate.
And next the washed body would be taken to the
quote house of beauty for actual mummification. And they're the
man that was deemed the overseer of Mysteries, who is
usually a follower of a Nubis, was assisted by a
priest of Osiris in the actual mummification process. The Overseer
(06:28):
of Mysteries would do this work according to the pricing
structure that had been agreed upon when the family first
brought the deceased in. Right. So first we're going to
run down the most involved process, which was called the
most perfect process. And this involves steps that are probably
familiar to people to some degree, because this is really
(06:49):
what most people talk about or they hear about snippets
of in history class brains through the nose, so starting
with the extraction of the brain matter through the nostrils
using according to her Rodotus, was an iron hook uh,
and there was iron being used in Egypt at the time,
but there have also been some questions about that. Uh.
The residue that the hook was unable to clear away
(07:10):
would be rinsed out with what is referred to in
several in the sources as drugs, and presumably that was
something with a cleaning agent in it. That there's still
some question marks about what the drugs were, something that
would help remove brain matter early on in this process.
There were also two men involved. You had kind of
(07:31):
odd jobs. Yeah. I when I was doing research on this,
I I am Tracy and said, I just found the
two worst jobs in ancient Egypt's history. Yeah, first was
not quite as bad. That was the scribe, and the
scribe would mark the left side of the deceased body
where the incision would be made, and then a second man,
(07:51):
who was called the slitter, would make the cut to
open the abdominal cavity. And according to the first century
d cee Greek historian Diodora Siculous, who we mentioned earlier.
The slitter would then be he would have to take
off running because he would be set upon by everyone
present and they would curse him and throw rocks at him.
(08:13):
And this was actually a ritualized thing. Uh. This was
all part of the natural Egyptian belief that anyone who
would perform violence on a human body was horrible and
should be hated. Uh. But somebody had to do it.
So this was the slitter's job, sort of to be
professionally hated, and not exactly the best job there was
(08:37):
because it was like, hey, great job, now we're going
to beat you. Um. We don't know for sure how
much the scribe got of this treatment. We do know
that the person who actually performed the cut really kind
of got uh, had a rough day at the office.
At this point, the embombers could start their task free
of the stigma of having been the ones to wound
(08:59):
the boy. The rest of their work was considered reparative
and sacred, So the abdomen would then be emptied and
thoroughly cleaned and washed, and the removed viscero would also
be washed. And this washing was done via first rinsing
the area or the viscera with palm wine and then
rinsing it again with an infusion of pounded spices. The
(09:21):
cavity was filled with natron, then it was sown shut
and at this point the body was also placed in
natron for seventy days. There's actually some scholarly debate about
whether it was a shorter period, and that could stem
in from a change in the type of natron that
was used in earlier embalming. The natron was used in
a liquid state from the Middle Kingdom on, though it
(09:45):
seems like a solid natron salt was used and this
would result in a faster desiccation of the body. Yes,
so the the there The other number that you'll sometimes
here is forty days, so we know it's somewhere in
there um. And there are also a few factors that
would change the results of the natron treatment and how
(10:05):
long it would take, and that include the quality of
the mix, uh of the natron, the condition of the
body prior to embolving, as you can well imagine whether
the natron had been used before, because it would sometimes
be reused and it would get less and less effective
with each use. You have to also consider the ratio
of natron to body volume. And the climatic conditions of
(10:28):
the area. Obviously, if it's a more human space, it's
going to take longer for the body to dry out.
This is basically drying the body out, getting all the
water out, and that's gonna prevent bacteria and things from
breaking down the tissue or at least slow it down dramatically.
(10:48):
After this two months soak, the temporary stuffing materials would
be removed and the body would be washed again, and
once the abdomen was thoroughly cleaned, it was refilled with
aromatic substances. Then this could include Cassia, juniper, and mirror
as well as other things, and they these substances all
smelled nice, but they also preserved the body and they
(11:10):
prevented the abdominal wall from collapsing. And additional materials that
could be used to fill the abdominal cavity could be resin,
which also works as a disinfectant. They would use oils,
hung winds and perfumes kind of fill it out and
keep it as clean as possible in the afterlife and
also keep it from smelling horrible. Yeah. A side note
(11:31):
in case you've always wondered but didn't know, mirr is
a gum resin that comes from a tree and it
smells really sweet. Cassia is a course cinnamon bark, which
of course also has a very sweet smell. And then
uh they would also pour hot resin onto the body
in a thin layer and that would serve as a disinfectant.
(11:51):
So several different steps steps were being taken to prevent
any sort of bacteria, any sort of moisture that could
lead to um additional breakdown of the tissue preservation. From
this point, the corpse could have any kind of cosmetic
dressing that was going to be done, and this could
include dying and styling the hair, including adding heron's extensions
(12:14):
and applying colored pigments to the face. And then it
was at this point that the corpse would be wrapped
in the linen strips that we have the visual association
with of what a mummy looks like, and you adhere
these strips to the body. The underside was treated with
gum and then specialists, basically people whose only job was
working as a bandager, would perform this rapping. The digits
(12:36):
of the hands and the feet would be wrapped individually,
and then the rest of the body would be wrapped
and a red linen shroud would cover the body after
their wrapping was finished, and throughout each stage of this
process there would be a lector priest that would read
magical texts over the body, and protective amulets would be
placed at various locations around the neck and limbs, sometimes
(12:57):
around the waist and as well as tucked into the
layers of wrapping as they got to the final stages.
Once the corpse was fully prepared in this manner, it
would go back to the family and sometime during the
two plus months that the body had been with the embalmers,
the family would have acquired a wooden human shaped shell
that the body would go back into, and it would
(13:18):
be put in this box and then normally UH and again,
since this is the highest level UH, that box would
be stored upright in like a family sepulchral chamber. So
that is the most perfect process, yes, where everything is
done with great care, and there are many many steps
before we move on to the somewhat perhaps less perfect process.
(13:42):
You like to take a moment and talk about our sponsor.
That sounds grand, So let's get back to what the
maybe families of a little more modest means might have done. Yeah,
the most modest means, but slightly more modin Yes, this
is this is like the mid grade quality offication exactly. Uh.
And this mid range treatment of Egypt's dead was, as
(14:04):
you might suspect, a bit less involved. They did not
take as much time perform as many steps. So rather
than taking the body's organs out, as was the practice
and the most expensive option, instead what would happen is
that embalmers would inject oil of cedar into the body
through the anal opening, which would then be sealed, and
(14:26):
this body that was now full of oil would be
soaked in netron for seventy or forty days depending or
somewhere in between. And after this soak was complete, they
would drain the oil from the body. They would um
unseal the anial opening, and then the cedar oil will
have liquefied the internal organs and so everything would sort
(14:46):
of flesh out at once. At this point, the body
was really depleted down to nothing but the skin and
the skeleton, and that's how it would be returned to
the deceased family without any kind of additional treatment. So uh,
not so much with the wrapping in the actual mummification
just an embalming process that was thorough but not as involved.
(15:06):
And then for the poor, we have an extremely basic
level of it of embalming. Yeah. So they would cut
open the body and remove the intestines, but it was
pretty quick. It wasn't careful, it wasn't all the intestines
were not washed. They still stoning the person, whomandicut I
would presume because the body was still considered sacred, although
(15:28):
I didn't find anything that separated Uh, those two instances
like that specified only in the highest and most perfect
level versus this. But they would flush the abdominal cavity
with alcohol and they would then soak the body in
natron for seventy days or less. Uh, But then that
was it. So after the neatron soak and it came out,
(15:49):
they gave it a quick rince and then it went
back to the family or sometimes in the case of
a popper that had no family, the embalmers would bury it.
Not so much with the tomb and the beautiful everything.
But what we have not talked about, and I'm sure
people are going hey. In fact, I was like hey,
in a moment that we cut out of this podcast
earlier why didn't you mention why didn't we talk about
(16:12):
the organs that came out of the bodies and the
jars that they went into, which are another thing that
probably if you've been to any kind of mummy display
in a museum, you've seen a lot of uh So,
the first thing that I found interesting in my research
is that brains were not particularly sacred to the ancient Egyptians.
Uh So, in this process, the brain was often cut
(16:33):
into smaller pieces to facilitate the removal and pulling it
out through the nasal cavity most of the time, uh
and brain matter was usually discarded. It was not treated
with the care of other parts of the body well.
And according to the beliefs in this culture, all of
your important stuff was in your heart and not your brain.
That kind of makes sense. Um. In nineteen sixty nine,
(16:56):
the Egyptian skulls that are part of the macalister collection
at Cambridge University were studied to figure out how the
brain was handled in each sample, and the findings support
this idea of the brain just not being regarded as important,
and there had often been holes drilled into the skulls
to help remove brain tissue and brain tissue often remained
(17:17):
inside the skull, suggesting that embombers were not incredibly thorough
and painstaking, at least not as much as they were
with other organs. Right, And there uh isn't actually any
information on how the viscera was handled after being removed
from the body in the writings of Herodotus and Diodorus,
(17:37):
who we've talked about a lot, but thankfully archaeology has
kind of filled in the blanks. And this is an
aspect of the process which actually evolved and changed over time.
It wasn't always done the same way. So if you
were waiting for the canopic jar talk, here we go.
In the late period, which was from the six sixties
until the three thirties, the viscera would be placed into
(17:59):
four canopic jars. And the earlier examples of these jars
are kind of plain, but later on they are very
ornamental jars and they represent the sons of Horace. So
jars with the human headed Mseti usually held the liver.
Then there was Happy who had a bamboon head and
that held the lungs. Do Amutef had the head of
(18:21):
a jackal and held the stomach, and then the intestines
were held by k base enough which had the head
of a falcon, and these were normally placed in the
tomb along with the body. And in the Hellenistic period
roughly from the three twenties to the thirties b c e.
The practice of handling the viscera shifted a little bit,
(18:41):
and then organs were normally placed into wooden chests or
sometimes set between the body's legs prior to the bandaging process,
and in some mommies from this time the organs have
actually been found, treated and washed and preserved and then
returned to the deceased abdominal cavity. When e Ship became
part of the Roman Empire and thirty one BC, mummification
(19:04):
practices shifted again and it became common for bodies to
be coated with resin to prevent decay instead of using
this longer and more involved process. But during late Antiquity
some bodies were simply treated with natron and then they
would be dressed in their regular clothes again rather than
wrapped in bandages, so they really sort of had cutbacks,
(19:25):
kind of got a little less intricate and ceremonial as
they went. It's time progressed, so not everything went into jars,
obviously because you have more than four organs. Despite the
clearing out of the abdomen and the trunk that we
mentioned earlier, the heart would be left in the body
and it was believed that it would be weighed in
(19:46):
the afterlife as part of the judgment of the dead,
and the kidneys were also often left, although we are
a little less clear on why that is the case. Uh.
In a paper on surgical procedures performed during mummifications that
was written by Bob or In ronaldust Wade Uh, the
pair point out that there's no real Middle Egyptian word
(20:06):
for kidney. There are some that kind of hints at it,
but no specific word, and they suggest that maybe ancient
Egyptians were entirely clear on this aspect of human anatomy.
It's also worth noting that when canopic jars are being
used in the late period, there were, as we said,
only four way more than four internal organs are in
the human body, so it appears that dissection was never
(20:30):
done in Egypt until the late Ptolemaic times, so it
makes sense that they may not have had a full
picture of the inner workings of a man. So even
though they were going in and removing organs, they had
not done sort of an exploratory correct surgical uh look
at the whole human body, which makes sense since cutting
(20:50):
into the body was a taboo, right. Uh. And it's
also worth noting that the incision that they were using
for removing these organs was only about two and a
half inches long, really just enough for one of these
embalming experts to get their hand in to remove things,
so they were really feeling around in the dark. Yeah. Well,
and if if you've watched an actual autopsy video or
(21:15):
any kind of like human anatomy study video involving an
actual body, or you know, if you've actually been in
on one of those, it's it's not as neat and
tidy in there as it is depicted when something has
been like prepared for classroom use or on television or whatever.
It's kind of like a big mass of blade goop
(21:37):
in there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's uh not
to make light of it being a human, but it
reminds me of the Halloween trick where people take you
in the dark room and have you feel things in
a bowl that are wet and slimy, and if you
think about a lot of those kinds of things in
one big bowl and you have to get around and go,
that's a I think that's intestine. I mean, it would
(21:58):
be very hard to just identify by touch, even if
you were very experienced, because there's it's all moving and squishy.
It's not for the most part, you're not going to find,
like you know, clear edges. This is definitely Some scholars
do argue that the Egyptians had so much experience with
the practice of removing organs that there must have been
(22:21):
some more meaningful aspect to the kidney issue, but we
don't really know what that is yet. Yeah, there are
several theories. Some are very simple and it's like, well,
there's usually too much fatty tissue and it would have
been hard to remove other shade they didn't even know
they were there. But we haven't found any cultural evidence
of any import to the kidney. So we, like them,
are feeling around in the dark trying to figure out
(22:42):
what the scoop was. Suddenly I'm like cadaver study. That's
the word that I was starting to find. An earlier
a mummification appears to have ended for the most part
around the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in
the seventh century, and by that time it's estimated that
around seven thirty million people had been embalmed in ancient Egypt. Yeah,
(23:03):
they're considered the first embalmers. Uh, and they really you know,
it's a fascinating practice. The great depths, especially if you're
looking at the most perfect practice that they used. Uh,
it's a lot of really intricate steps and with such
reverence for the body. Yeah, it's quite um, it's quite
something to think about. Well, and like I know when
(23:25):
I learned about this in elementary school or whatever, the
focus was kind of whoo freaky, ran to the news,
But really it's got a lot in common with normal
funeral rituals in the West today. Like it's still about
preserving the body for as long as possible and having
a respectful uh form to return to the family in
(23:48):
some way, like for a service before it's buried, that
kind of thing. So there's they paved the way. There's
more in common than woe freaky. Yeah, burial cultures in
a lot of places. To me, that's sort of like
the I understand that the woe freaky part is what
often gets kids interested in things like this. Yeah, I'm
(24:09):
super excited about it, especially when it's kind of an
icky topic, and you know, teachers may need for their
their own sort of sanity to build that bridge of like,
look at this freaky thing, and it makes it less
scary because we uh, I know, certainly in the West
and of many other cultures there's still a lot of
taboo about death and talking about the dead and dead
bodies specifically. Uh that that's sort of I think helps
(24:32):
if we focus on the freaky part, particularly in a
learning situation, kind of makes it a little easier for everybody.
And kids love gross things of course as as a trend,
but it does it misses out on all of that
beautiful nuance and subtlety. And I, prior to researching this,
did not know about the practice of not turning over
a woman's body for several days out of fear that
(24:54):
it would be violated in some way. That was all
new information for me. So there are a lot of
these things that we don't ever hear about. Yeah, And
I think even including in today's episode, I've never heard
anything about any kind of different treatment for a woman's organs,
which are not the same as a man's organs internally,
(25:15):
Like I've never heard any Uterus ovary like what happened
with those discussed in any way? Ever? Uh, they certainly,
to the best of our knowledge, did not usually end
up in a jar. So there's always more stuff to learn.
I know, maybe someone knows and we'll write us a letter.
I'll tell us some some cool obscure thing that we
(25:38):
haven't learned. You are an Egyptologist, you should write us
for sure. Speaking of letters, I think you have some.
I have to both kind of short and one made
me giggle. Uh. So the first one is from our
listener Stephanie, and she says, I just recently discovered the podcast,
and I was super excited when I saw an episode
about Sarah Edmonds. So really, this is a praise Tracy
moment because that was her choice. Uh. Sarah, she as
(26:00):
an ant on my mother's side and kind of a
point of pride for our family. There is a monument
to her influence Michigan erected in the ninety nineties. Thank
you guys so much for doing a podcast on her.
My mom and grandpa were super excited to hear about it.
Awesome that's so cool. I always love when people write
in and they're related to someone that we talked about, her,
someone in the story that we talked about, or recently
(26:21):
when the plane was landing and they could see us
out the wind. I love those. It's you know how
history stays alive day to day. And the second one
is from our listener, Julia, and she says, I'm so
happy I recently found your podcast. I live in New
York City, and my long commute to work on the
subway is now a lot more interesting as I listen
to your back episodes. I hope you enjoyed this discussion
of death. Julia uh. She goes on to say, since
(26:44):
you always mentioned Pinterest at the end of the podcast,
I was curious to see what you're both pinning. I
plugged missed in History into the pinner search and got
this message. We couldn't find any results for missed in History,
but you might try holidays, corgy sneakers, or passa. I'm
not sure holidays, quarky sneakers, and pasta have to do
with the podcast, but perhaps I'll figure it out as
(27:04):
I continue to listen. Thank you for the always fascinating topics.
I can't wait to see what you two have planned
for the new year. It's funny you should say that
we have actually just moved our Pinterest, so it should
be much easier to find. Uh. It was a board
under the main house stuff works Pinterest, and now we've
moved it off to our own individual Pinterest account with
(27:26):
lots and lots of boards of our own. So if
you search for us now, we should come up and
search and if you just want to go there and
check it out, we are at pinterest dot com slash
missed in history, so it's much easier for us to
tell other people about Also, so you would like to
find our Pinterest again, that is pinterest dot com slash
missed in History. We're also on Twitter at missed in
(27:49):
history and on Facebook at a new U r L
which is Facebook dot com slash missed in history. Uh.
And our email address that one still the same. That
is History Podcast at Discovery dot com. If you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our website and do a search
for the term embalming and you will get how embalming works,
which does touch on ancient Egypt in the first embalmers.
(28:12):
If you'd like to learn almost anything else your brain
can conjure, you can do that at our website as well.
And that's how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.