March 15, 2011 • 39 mins
A mummy is a human being whose soft tissue has been preserved after death, and there are mummies around the world -- including natural mummies, as well as corpses that have been intentionally embalmed. Join Chuck and Josh to learn more..
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
We're about to do this stuff you should know saying, yeah,
did you like that? I did? Are you doing? Man? Great?
Now that I've switched out my foul smelling microphone cover? Yeah,
this is actually take two things. I'm not getting near it,
but I can you really imagine? Yeah, something's future facted
on the mike cover, the peak clipper cover. Yeah, weird.
(00:44):
You know, in real studios they change you out every
now and then. These things have been running for at
least a year. Fifty cents? All right, what's your chuck
your sterling intro? Speaking of fifty cents, do you remember
when we were talking about fossils. Oh, yeah, and we
said that every once in a while, something happens so
that a fossil naturally occurs um and that it's desiccated,
(01:09):
the skin is dried out. That's a mummy. Yeah, who knew?
I knew. Actually when we talked about that, I was
like we have to do how mummies work. And here
we are. I'm kind of surprised this one had slipped
under the radar for so long, right up our Yeah, um,
I went and looked. I'm like, surely we do have it,
and yeah, it's it's like stuff you should know died
(01:31):
in the wool. Yeah yeah, um. And you're about to
hear why dear listeners, because we're about to talk about
all the things that happened to a corpse after death,
which we've done before, but we need to go over again.
Mummies are cool, though, they are very cool. So Chuck,
let's say that you were stabbed in the stomach enough
times so that you could not move any longer. You
(01:53):
couldn't walk back home. It was out in the woods,
and the one person you're with, the very person who
stabbed you, left you there to die. You bleed out.
You're dead. Things start happening to your body, right, yeah,
pretty quickly. Up first is autolysis. Yes, that is uh,
that's kind of gruesome. That's when your organs that have
digestive enzymes actually say, well, this is what we do,
(02:17):
so we're gonna start digesting the organs right and not
like my stomach is eating itself because I'm hungry, Like,
my stomach is actually eating itself. It's rupturing and oozing
and it's it's it's being reduced to nothing. Um while
that's going on. And then actually, I think if I
remember correctly, that kind of helps kickstart the process of
(02:39):
puture faction. Right, yeah, autolysis starts within a few hours
after you're dead. The body, the body knows. And if
you want like a really um big overview of this
or in depth look at what happens to the body
immediately after death, you should listen to a Rigor Mortis
podcast if you haven't already body farms. I talked about
it in there too, So yes, intra faction, you're right,
(03:01):
is followed by or follows autolysis. And that is when
bacteria does its a little job and reduces everything to
a skeleton. And you know, depending where you are, it's
gonna happen in a few months, right, depending on where
you are. Now, We as human beings are a subtropical species, right, Chuck,
You know that, sure? So we are designed, if you
(03:23):
believe in that kind of thing, to decomposed, decomposed most
readily in a warm humid climate. That's where the bacteria
that breaks down our tissue lives or thrives moisture warmth.
If you have cold, dry, things change a little bit.
Like a refrigerator exactly. Um, which is a good place
(03:44):
to store body if you want to preserve it, or
food if you want to eat it. It's a good
point to your body if you want to eat it.
For an in depth flick at that, you might want
to listen to our cannibalism podcast though. That's right, Um,
But let's say you don't have a refrigerator. Nature provides it,
are you? On some occasions there's you'd see the ice man, right, yeah,
(04:06):
see the ice man. Yeah, that's the ice man. Yeah,
and the Italian ounce. This dude is very well preserved
natural mummy. It was amazing. Died and basically got buried
in ice and kind of stayed that way. Yeah. I
think they have the impression that he fell into a
crevasse died, but it was during like a blizzard maybe
and he was covered with snow and ice that stuck
(04:28):
around for millennia. Um. But he's so well preserved. You
can see the tattoos on this um skin and still yeah,
and well, and we knew. Hey, they tattooed people years
ago exactly, little window into what life was like for
ice Man. Yeah, he um he was. He had I
think a nice little set of arrows and his bow
and copper age European guy. I think he had a
(04:51):
wallet sized photo of of you as well of me. Yeah,
he was from the future. That's my that's what I think.
You just blew my mind, Chuck good So ice as
we talked about the fossils too, Um was a is
a very good preservant. But nothing does it. Oh, Pete
Boggs too. You remember I finally took you that picture
(05:13):
of tolin Man. About Pete again, if you have not
gone and looked at tole Man, it's awesome, Like his
whiskers are still there. And he lived a couple of
thousand years ago. Right, what's his name? Did they name
him just man? I would name him pet terrible. Um.
So those two are pretty good. But the money, the
(05:34):
natural money preservant is sand. Yeah, I had no idea.
The reason why sand is such a great preservative is
because it actually wicks away and absorbs and just removes
the um any type of humidity in the body, which
allows the body to desiccate, which means that there is
no place for bacteria to live, which means the tissues,
(05:57):
the tissue remains intact. And that's all about a mummy,
is it's a it's a corpse with its tissue intact. Well,
and this kind of kick started the whole mummification artificial
mummification craze in Egypt because at first they buried bodies.
They weren't in caskets, they were you know, buried in
the hot sand, and that preserved the body for so long.
(06:19):
They said, well, hey, if the body is preserved, then
that means the spirits preserved. And this all of a sudden,
we have new views on the afterlife and life. Right,
So what they decided to do and this was so
what I guess what you've just said though, was that
the mummification, the whole concept of mummies that we have
and that was so ingrained in the Egyptian culture, happened
(06:41):
by accident, right yeah. Um, so they started they figured
this out, So they start purposefully burying people in the
sand with the intent of them being mummified, right, Um.
But the problem is somewhere along the way they began
to have horrible thoughts of their dead. Well, it's has
choked with sand. So they started to say, maybe we
(07:03):
should put some sort of barrier up in between the
corpse and the sand. And that led to caskets, right, Yeah,
started with just like a wicker covering. Than that eventually
led to wooden boxes. Uh, but here's the rub. Now
the body is not preserved. Now the body rots. Well,
it's just a normal corpse. Now you put a barrier
(07:26):
between the body and the preservant in the form of
a tomb. So what's the Egyptian to do then? Well,
the Egyptians, being the very pious culture that they were,
and the very um intuitive and smart culture that they were,
you should for that, you should go read um did
the Greeks get all their ideas from the Africans? Good article?
Did you write them? Yeah? Did we do that, podcat man,
(07:47):
let's do that, okay. Um. They they decided that they
needed to rectify their um, their religious beliefs with their
um problem. They're they're need to preserve bodies. And what
did they do, Well, they said, maybe we can replicate
this natural process that we've discovered through man made artificial means.
(08:11):
And yeah, it's kind of like it's called embombing Josh.
And they actually figured out Chuck that like um, one
of the one of the problems with the desiccation, the
natural desiccation and the desert um was that the skin
turned like this crisp brown, like you know, over baked chicken.
It's exactly what it looks like actually. And Um, with
(08:34):
these embalming techniques that they eventually mastered, they could they
could preserve a body better than it could be preserved naturally,
which is man conquering nature, conquering death. Even well, uh,
they didn't have a huge success at first. They they
would embalm the bodies mainly to keep it away from
(08:55):
the elements, wrap it in linen, soaked in resin, and
they would create a nice little shape pola forums it
looked kind of like people. But that didn't really do
a whole lot because the bandages didn't really halt the composition.
They basically figured out that it happens from the inside out.
It took him, It took him a few centuries of
not millennia, basically wrapping it up and it's just disintegrating
within the bandages at first, right, But those bandages are
(09:18):
important because they stick around pretty much the whole time,
same with the resin right. Yes, so those two very
early embalming techniques are mummification techniques. UM stuck around, but
it was a big leap when they figured out, oh
wait a minute is going on inside and so we
need to start addressing that by removing organs. Right, And
it's about here I think that we we hit the
(09:40):
Middle Kingdom and like the the mummies that we think
of were produced in the from the eighteenth to twentieth
dynasties of the Middle Kingdom. Yeah, that was when the
like the heyday of mummification, right right, which was um
between fifteen seventy and ten seventy five b C. The
mummies that we think of, the ones that are still
around like really well preserved today, they they were preserved
(10:04):
during this time, right, right. So what do you do
when when you realize that everything bad is happening to
a corpse from the inside out? How do you how
do you address that? Should we just walk through the
process one by one, the gruesome process? Yeah, okay, the
first thing you do is you take it and it varies,
(10:25):
you know, the different processes and within the processes, they
had things that they would say, sort of like religious
rights that they would go through as well. It's very
sacred process. But they would take the body generally to
the red Land desert region is not near a whole
lot of people, so people aren't grossed out, but it
is near the Nile River. They needed the Nile River
to well, we'll see that in a second step one.
(10:47):
Step one. You need the Nile for step one. They
think they did in an open tents obviously to get
some good ventilation going. And uh, the first place they
took the body was to the Ibou, the place of purification. Yeah,
that was basically the Nile or the place where they
place near the Nile where they rensed the body with
you washed the body off. It's like a rebirth symbol
(11:10):
of rebirth. Right, so the the the corpse was hastened
or some of the spirit was hastened in the afterlife,
and we should probably stay here so it doesn't get
too confusing. There were three spirits um that the Egyptians
believed comprised a person, right, the ka, the ba, and
the ak. Yeah, okay, it's always tricky to pronounce that, right,
(11:34):
So I think um with this purification process the co
or the or the bar or the ah, we're moved
along to the to the next world. But the ka
that was the one that was um inextricably linked with
the corpse, which became the whole reason for mummification. As
(11:54):
long as the corps was preserved, the co was preserved
and the afterlife could you know, the person could live
in the afterlife. But once the corpse died, the co
died and that second death was final, which is why
they wanted to preserve bodies in the first place. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. It's like the opposite of ashes to
ashes and dusted us. Right. So, after they've washed the
(12:16):
body and sort of reborn it and the rivers of
the nile, Uh, they carried the body to the per
Kniffer and that is the house of mummification. And this
is kind of where This is the basement of the
Fisher house. Basically huh and six ft under the Fishers.
Oh yeah, this is in the basement. This is where
Rico and the gang would get to work. Um. They
(12:38):
would lay it on a wooden table. The body. Uh.
They removed the brain by hammering a chisel through the
bone of the nose, you know. I knew that already
before this article. The Christian slater E's and like he's
in like one of the creep shows or um Amazing
Amazing stories or tales from the Crypto movie Pump up
the volume. It might have been that, but I think
(13:00):
it was like a smaller um vignette, like a mini
movie within the larger movie. It's called like a Lot
number nine or whatever. And Leaning the Cube, I think
it was. Now that's called Brotherhood of the Tiger now
I think they Yeah. Anyway, they there's a mummy who's
hell bent on taking other people's brains using these hooks
(13:20):
or whatever. Well, and that's exactly what they do. They
make a nose hole basically larger than the nostrils they
in sort of big hook, iron hook and start scooping
it out. Eventually they go down to a spoon and
eventually they just rents out the remaining bits of brain.
And what's funny is so hold on they discard the
brain because they thought, I don't know why we have
this stuff in our head, but we probably don't need
(13:41):
it in the afterlife, which is kind of unusual for
the Egyptians because they preserved organs, you know, but the brain.
And what's what's funny though, Like I think what we
just kind of meander past that we should kind of
um meditate on for a second, Chuck, is that they
get to a point where they filled the head with water.
I imagine close the nose in the mouth and shake
(14:02):
the head around to slash all this stuff out, and
then lean the head over and let all the last
bits come out. That's how I would do it. And
I wonder if they did shots of that stuff as
like part of the ceremony, I would draw the line there. Well,
they probably just thought, I don't know, they didn't even
know what the brain was. Yeah, that's true, that's just waste.
So the brains out, Josh. Then they take a blade
(14:25):
made from obsidian sacred stone, cut a little incision on
the left side and reach in and start pulling out
the organs that they can get to and then preserving those,
like you said, except for the kidneys, because they didn't
think they were important either, which they were, you know,
I mean, the kidneys are important, but it's not like
brain important. Well, I mean, you need kidneys to live.
(14:47):
I'm sure they preserve the appendence you need, all of
you that was probably the most holy of the organs.
So they actually when they preserve these things, they would um,
they would wrap them in uh in resin strip of linen. Right,
Basically they would mummify each organ and then they put
them in in canopic jars. Basically it was like here's
(15:09):
your body, and then also here are your organs. They'd
leave the heart though, because they thought the heart was
you know, linked to the soul and the spirit. And
they're kind of on the money there, I think. So
these organs take up space in our chest and abdominal cavities. Um,
so they would actually um stuff the body with like
(15:32):
incense and other materials as well. Right, yeah, well, first
they'd rent it once they like I forgot, they take
out the lungs to the abdomen yeah right right there
you can't get along little side slit, and then they
would rent the chest cavity with palm wine and then
they would stuff it actually basically straw what I didn't say,
(15:54):
what actually just said other materials. How would you straw?
Maybe frankinsense, little mirror, Yeah, just to complete the trilogy,
straw franken cent sin mur that that kept the body
from like caving in on itself, basically containing a little
bit of shape. And then here is the key. This
(16:15):
is the key to momification. And as a matter of fact,
I was just gonna say it now. I found it
on the internet. There is a step by step, very
easy to follow recipe on UM. I think WICKI how
which I don't normally go on, but it's the only
place I can find a recipe for mommifying a chicken
using the Egyptian method, and it calls for UM natron, right, Yeah,
(16:41):
that's the key. Natron is this UM basically a compound
that the Egyptians figured out they could gather and and
and combine from the Nile, which is basically baking soda
sodium bicarbonate and um table salt sodium chloride. You mix
the two together and it becomes this perfect person of it.
So they would put nature in powder, which is like
(17:03):
this just accelerated the technique of mommification like by light
years UM and they would cover the body with this
stuff and leave it and it would just completely dry
the body out. Right. Yeah, this took about forty days.
They had to guard the body while this was going on, obviously,
because they didn't want vultures digging through the natren for
what lies beneath. After the forty days, they move the
(17:26):
body then to the wabet, which is the house of purification. Yeah,
and call that incense and the stuffing out, refill it
with the nature in resin, soaked linen and other materials
again whatever these mysterious things are. Then they would sew
all the incisions up, cover the skin with resin, and
then say, hey, it's time to wrap this puppy. Yeah.
(17:49):
And this is where we get the idea for the mummy,
our modern idea of a mummy always wearing like they
are always coming off. You can just see the eyes,
maybe teeth or something. So this is where we're at
there at the bandaging procedure that thirty five or forty days,
while um the nature and powder was doing its work,
(18:10):
working away all of the basically acting as the desk
knt Um, the family of the deceased was going around
town going do you have any linens we can have forever? Uh?
Do you have some linens we can have and cut
you like your linen's to spend eternity in the heavens
above with our dead. Um. They collected about four thousand
(18:32):
square feet just top the top of my head. That's
about how much. They gathered um of linen and would
bring it to the embalmers, and the embalmers would say, hey,
we like this piece that pieces horrible. Um, you're really
gonna bury your your dad in this, And they would
take the best stuff and they would cut it into
or they would tear him into strips three to eight
(18:53):
inches wide a bandages, and they would start the rapping,
which would take a little while, right, Yeah, it takes
uh week or two, I guess probably depending on how
big the body is. Common sense. Start with the hands
and feet. You wrap all This is the initial under wrapping,
I guess. You wrap everything individually, each little finger, each
will toe everything's wrapped. And then once everything is wrapped individually,
(19:16):
they do a whole body wrap ah, applying new layers,
coating the linen with again the hot resin to keep
everything in place, uttering spell. Sometimes they would wrap amulets
over different parts of the body, wrap it up in
there with you, protect you in the next world, that
kind of thing, right, and then pressto chango you are
(19:40):
a mummy. And before we go further the process we've
just described this really ordinate, wonderful, lengthy process where you
would think about it like there's so many There were
a lot of Egyptians running around, and a lot of
them died on any given day, and there was a
lot of work to be done. So this process that
(20:01):
we just described was for the people who had lots
of money. For some reason, the wealthy have always been revered, right,
and I've also gotten special treatment, right right. Um, if
you were just an ordinary schmoke like me or Chuck,
you were going to get the budget package, which is
basically like instead of like carefully removing all of the
(20:22):
organs each one, they would inject oil like this oil
mixture into your cavities. Let it sit for a few days. Um,
it was to stop up all your orifices first leak out,
thank you. So I don't know how they did that.
I guess with other materials that you right, So they
(20:43):
would stop you up full of oil, let it, let
you sit for a few days, and then unstop your
orifices and let all the oil drain out and it
would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it.
It's a lot easier, a lot faster. So even this
many thousands of years ago. You get what you pay
for exactly. That's pretty sad. Yeah, it's always been a
(21:04):
budget package. Or maybe that's a good thing that it
wasn't only just reserved, like if you don't have any money,
you just can't get Mummified's the way to go. They thought,
you know what, let's think of it a cheaper way
to do this for you folks. Let's just fill you
up with the oil, stop up your orifices, and give
you a good shake. So um, you're you're prepared. You're
all wrapped. However, they got your organs out there out
(21:26):
you're bandaged, um, and you're now about to be outfitted
what's called a cartonage cage, which is kind of like
a breastplate, um, some cool like forearm armor, leg armor,
pretty much this thing that's gonna hold your body together
for a while. And a funerary mask, which is like
(21:47):
the famous masks we think of when we think of
like King tut like it's a death mask. And these
were extremely important because they directed the spirit the car
to the right body your words. So it was in
a person's visage or possibly that of a god, but
the spirit would be in on you know what to
(22:08):
look for. They would know that. That's how they knew.
This guy is supposed to supposed to either look like
Josh or Anubis. Either way, I think that's him right
away there, so let's grab him. And speaking of Anubis,
you would be committed to your tomb uh following a
funeral procession where you were carried in your sue right,
(22:29):
which that's what you think of with King Tutt. That's
the casket that looks like a person, like the gold
casket in the shape of a human. Let's a suet
um that would be carried to your tomb, and there
would be a priest dressed as the jackal god Anubis.
Um there were there was the ceremony of the mouth,
(22:50):
which is pretty cool because there was some sort of
weird understanding. I guess that Um, you had died and
now certain things had to be stored, and the ceremony
of the mouth was um. This um passing over of
sacred objects to like the across the suet's face. The
caskets face UM. And it would restore your five senses
(23:14):
because you need that exactly so you're placed. And this
is weird, Chuck, did you find this odd? That your
casket was placed leaned up against the wall. Yeah, it
almost like I would do that while I was getting
everything ready, and then I would lay it down. So
it almost made me think that they kind of forgot
and they say, oh, well, we left that first one
leaning against the wall, so I guess that's the way
(23:35):
we do it. But that's not true. I'm sure they
had a very good reason, probably because it was easier
to just walk up right out of there. Well, yeah,
I would think they wanted to leave it upright, but
standing it upright they didn't have, like the perfectly level
floor probably wasn't too secure, so they just gave it
a little lean, sure, little help, which is far less
(23:57):
secure than just laying it down on the floor. Yeah. Um,
following that, you are your furniture. Don't forget your canopic
jar of organs late next to you little food maybe? Sure? Um,
your furniture, Um, basically the stuff you're gonna need in
the next life to be comfortable, and your set. Your
tomb is sealed up, and it's probably inscribed with something
(24:20):
along the lines of as for anybody who shall enter
this tomb in his impurity, I shall wring his neck
as a bird's there's a standard um mummy curse. Yeah,
a mummy curse on the tomb. Yeah. People became in
the nineteen twenties Howard Carter dug up King Tut's tomb
and people were just crazy for mummies at the time.
(24:41):
Westerners are like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting.
This cursed thing is so neat. Uh. Laurel and Hardy
are doing mummy curse movies and uh. A microbiologist from
Germany name Guitard Cramer or Cramer Uh. He said there
may be something to this cursed thing because they bury
people of food produce his mold spores. So when they
(25:01):
unearthed this tomb, all these mold sports are released into
the air and it might kill you. So it's not
that there's something to the curse, but it could lead
people to tie the two together. Unearthed tomb, then you die. Certainly,
there's something weird about the Carter expedition who Um unearthed
King Tut's tomb in two because eleven of the people
who were involved, not necessarily present, but involved, UM died
(25:25):
within seven years. I think eleven people in a canary
his canary died like UM right right when they entered
the tomb and Copra ate it. That's bad luck, it is,
and then it just went downhill from there. Um. So
there's all sorts of explanations, but it's also um oddly
intriguing and like you said, egypt Mania gripped the West.
(25:46):
Oh yeah, they loved it all right, um. And there
was actually unraveling parties where people would get their hands
on mummies and then like unbandage them, see what's in there,
which is like, that's not what you do with a
dead body. Yeah, it's bad luck too. So that pretty
much is the Egyptian mummy, and that's what we mainly
think of. But they weren't the first people to do
(26:07):
this kind of thing in the in the interesting yeah,
they the first. The oldest mummies actually on the planet
are from northern Chile, the Chinchorro people Cinchero, let's go
to Cinchorro. Uh this they started doing this about two
thousand years before the Egyptians. But they were not very
much like uh, the Egyptians. They basically dismembered and disemboweled
(26:31):
the body, put it back together again, sewed it up,
and then covered it with black mud. Well they put
it back together with like straw and sticks, and that's
what they had. It was like they made qupy dolls
out of like these bodies, basically covered it with black
mud and shaped it into a human form. Uh. But
they believe that this wasn't necessarily done to preserve the
(26:55):
body for the afterlife. Maybe it was more for the
people left on the planet Earth to mourn the death
of their loved one keep them around a little longer,
which is very sweet because they saw evidence of like
retouching of the paint, signs of wear and tear, so
that you know, basically they were kept in the households
for a little while. They think basically as statutes, freaky
(27:16):
freaky statues. And that was five thousand BC, which is
two thousand years before the Egyptians came onto the scene
at all. It's right, um, And the would you say
the Chinchorro people. I think I went with Chinchorro, but
someone will point that out if I'm wrong. Um, They're
(27:37):
not the only ones in South America who got into
modification either. The Incas very famously did as well. They
had a little habit of sacrificing children to the gods. Um,
and they cultural relativism chucked. They would um through this
process like the child and the child's family were just
(27:57):
treated like like royalty before this, like it was a
high honor to be chosen to be sacrificed to the gods. Um.
And they would get the child really wasted on this
fermented corn concoction, take the child up to the cave.
Sometimes I think they would whack the kid over the head,
(28:17):
or other times they would get the child so wasted
that um, they just would leave them there in the
cold temperatures, exposed to the freezing temperatures, and the child
would die of exposure. I can't see jerks about this,
you can, um. But the there's a very famous mummy
called the Maiden, who is a fifteen year old girl
and she was sacrificed as thanks to the gods for
(28:41):
a really good corn harvest by the Incas in Peru
five dred years ago. Did you see that picture I
sent you. It's like looking at a girl who's sleeping,
but she's been dead for five hundred years, like you
you if you've been to South America as I know
you have, or Central America, like she looks just like
one of those girls you might see down there like
Central American indigenous person. She's probably short. Then she looks
(29:05):
kind of shorty. That'd be funny. She's like six too.
But then moving on up, there's also one and it
didn't make it into this article, but chuck, I've been
there myself. Wanna want to. Mexico has a mummy museum
and they have the world's smallest mummy. I think it
might have been a fetus, but they were all naturally
(29:26):
mummified um to the great surprise of the nineteenth century
townspeople who had to move a graveyard and found like, okay,
there's a lot of mummies. How big it was very
small object uh coffee cup, coffee cup, standard coffee cups.
But then there's like people. They were still wearing their
(29:46):
suits and it's it's really amazing. You walk into this
little Mexican building and there's just dead people everywhere, just
behind this glass. It's very neat. If you ever go
to Wanna want to Mexico, you have to go to
the mummy museum. I think I should. Yeah. Lady Chang China,
Chinese were they were lousy with mummies. Yeah, they loved
(30:08):
the mummify people. She was an aristocrat from about two
thousand years ago, and she is believed to be about
the best preserved ancient mummy so far. Did you see
her picture? Yeah, so their tongue sticking up pretty well
mummified and her hair still. Yeah, she was. They haven't
studied her a whole lot, the Chinese haven't, so they
don't know exactly how she was prepared, but they do
(30:33):
think that mercury and the embalming fluid might have something
to do with it. Yeah, then I would imagine that
will do mercury, Yeah sure. And um also in China,
mummies have kind of rewritten history a little bit. UM,
some very very ancient mummies from UM one thousand BC
before one thousand BC, UM, they found some people of
(30:56):
Indo Iranian descent. You know, they linked them to Um
like basically Mesopotamia through tattoos and like other implements that
they had in the shape of their face, the way
they looked, and they figured out like, wait a minute,
these people were like Indo European traders, what are they
doing here? And they just made their way to settle
(31:16):
right in in the deserts of China before the Han
dynasty ever showed up. So that kind of changed things
a little bit. I'm sure. Uh, if we talk about mummies,
we got to talk about the more modern day mummies
because of the big interest in mummification thanks to tut
being found was the big one. That's right around the
(31:39):
time Lenin died in Russia and they said, you know what,
let's preserve Lenin and disclaiming the Kremlin. So that's exactly
what they did. And we do not know exactly how
because it's an ancient Russian secret. I don't know about ancient,
but it's a Russian secret, and they it's ongoing because
they continue to him in a preservative bath every now
(32:02):
and then, and he's wears a waterproof suit. That's right.
And if you've ever seen pictures of Linen or av parone,
did they look pretty lifelike. But hers was hers is
way cool. They basically replaced all the fluids in her
body with wax, right, which would be a very modern
take on the ancient practice. There's also um incorruptible corpses
(32:25):
of the Catholic faith. It's basically a person who is
so pure on earth that they their body just didn't
didn't rot. And there's example those there's one. He's like
a prince. He's like a child prince. I think he
died in like he died more than a thousand years
(32:46):
ago or about a thousand years ago, um, and his
his body is totally preserved and there's no evidence that
he was embalmed or anything like that. They don't understand
that there are some bodies out there that just the
five logic that I wrote an article and you should
read it. It's a miracle. How can a courts be incorruptible?
We need to keep in track of these awesome ideas.
(33:08):
Where where's our person? Where's our boy Charlie or no,
our boy Friday Charlie uh and then Josh, finally we
have In the nineteen seventies, some scientists discovered something called plasticization,
and that is when all of the water and lipids
in the body cells replaced with polymers and you basically
(33:32):
become like plastic, very flexible and durable. You don't decompose,
and you don't stink too bad. And that is used
to preserve bodies, mainly for anatomical research at this point,
or for bodies world or bodies the exhibit I have have
you've been no, I've never been but that's how they
do it. It It is really something. I mean, you're right
there up on this corpse missing its skin and like
(33:55):
it is a dead person, um and it's really interesting.
There's one the one that I went to in Atlanta.
It's two eyeballs and they're connected to the spinal cord
which is going down and then the coming off the
spinal cord are the major nerves of the central nervous system.
And that's it. And it's just laid out perfectly, really
(34:16):
kind of surprising. I'm shocked that I haven't been to
that yet. It's pretty cool. It's definitely worth going to.
I did the dialogue in the Dark thing. I have
not been there. That's next door. That was that kid.
You know. I was a little disappointed. Yeah, not in
the exhibit itself, but the way the way they do it. Uh.
I think it could have been like really awesome, but
(34:37):
the way they do it, it wasn't as awesome as
it could have been. Just gonna take you. Me and
her sister went and she said they would have liked it.
Put there was this very loud, drunk woman who kept
like falling into people. What they wanted to know? You
can do about that near the dark weather, you could
just like kick her in the shin and run away.
We should mention Bob a Dr Bob Bryer real quick though.
He is a Egyptologist who or said, you know what,
(35:01):
I want to try and replicate the Egyptian technique. And
he did it, Yeah, with the chicken, and he did
it was pretty successful at the University of Maryland School
of Medicine. And one of the things he learned from
doing this that the uh, the way the body ends
up looking as a result of the mummification process, not
the fact that it's been in the ground for thousands
(35:23):
and thousands, like the shriveled, wrinkled look. Yeah. Yeah, so
that's one thing I learned. That's a big thing to learn, though,
I mean, think about it. That's Egyptology hasn't really advanced
much in the last fifty years. And it not that
I know is I never Aldo didn't find squat, No,
he didn't know that wasn't he Aldo her Aldo looked
for um components. I watched that one. That was fun.
(35:44):
I was a youngster and I was so excited and yeah,
but it's so disappointed when it was just a total disaster. Yeah,
well it's it for mummies, right, chucky anymore? I'm I'm
are you mummied out? All right? Um? If you want
to learn more about mummies, check out m you m
M I E s in the handy search bar, How
stuff works dot com. You can learn how to mummify
(36:05):
a chicken on wiki how and um what else? I
think there might be a website for the mummies of
wanna want to? That's I think g U A n
A j u A t oh. Maybe sounds good at me,
does it? You know? I think Matt and Rachel from
Cool Stuff in the Planet did a thing on the
(36:26):
Egyptian Mummy or not Egyptian Mummy Museum? Want to want
to Mummy Museum? Yes, Cool Stuff on the Planet check
out that is definitely worth watching as well. It's worth
watching anyway. And I said handy search bar somewhere in there,
which means I guess time for listener mail. Uh hi,
Chuck and Josh and Jerry. My name is Maddie. I'm
twelve years old. I love your podcast. I wait all
(36:48):
day at school to get home so I can check
for new podcasts. They always help me fall asleep, but
not because you're boring, but because it gets my brain
thinking and the brain gets tired, that's cool. Uh was
wondering if you give a shout out to my best bud, Casey.
Casey has a tumor in his leg and is in
a wheelchair. He tells me he is very miserable, but
at least he gets to listen to me talk about
(37:09):
you guys. And fun fact, he also has a pet
rooster named Louis, and Lewis is house strained, so he
just runs around the house. That is awesome house strain chicken.
So please give Louis, I'm sorry Casey a shout and Lewis.
While it make him feel better, it would make his
day or even his year. And tell me which podcast
you're gonna put it on, because I am just twelve
(37:29):
and some of them are inappropriate. Oh was this inappropriate?
I don't know. Probably not this shaking the brain part out.
We'll figure it out, Okay, I'll tell him to just
listen to the listener mail and let his parents listen
to the And also a suggestion the infamous story of
that French queen who said let the meat cake. I
(37:49):
don't remember her name's marine that with Kristen Dunns. And
remember I do not have Facebook, so please answer me
by emails, she says. And then she is a d
D or t T it's d D. And then her
signature is potato in a mushroom for Maggie. I don't
(38:10):
even know what that means. All the kids are saying
these days. All right, potato in a mushroom? Everybody, you said, Maggie,
it's Maddie, right, Maddie. Okay, Maddie, thanks for the email. Maddie.
Did we give a shout out to Lewis and Casey
Well o, Casey, We hope you're feeling better, but I'm
sorry to hear about that, and hope you're up and
around before you know it. Take care, Lewis. Yes, if
you're an egyptologist and you have some good mummy stories,
(38:32):
we want to hear it. You know what, if you
have any good mummy story, we want to hear it.
Wrap it up in an email and send that email
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
(38:55):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
(00:20):
We're about to do this stuff you should know saying, yeah,
did you like that? I did? Are you doing? Man? Great?
Now that I've switched out my foul smelling microphone cover? Yeah,
this is actually take two things. I'm not getting near it,
but I can you really imagine? Yeah, something's future facted
on the mike cover, the peak clipper cover. Yeah, weird.
(00:44):
You know, in real studios they change you out every
now and then. These things have been running for at
least a year. Fifty cents? All right, what's your chuck
your sterling intro? Speaking of fifty cents, do you remember
when we were talking about fossils. Oh, yeah, and we
said that every once in a while, something happens so
that a fossil naturally occurs um and that it's desiccated,
(01:09):
the skin is dried out. That's a mummy. Yeah, who knew?
I knew. Actually when we talked about that, I was
like we have to do how mummies work. And here
we are. I'm kind of surprised this one had slipped
under the radar for so long, right up our Yeah, um,
I went and looked. I'm like, surely we do have it,
and yeah, it's it's like stuff you should know died
(01:31):
in the wool. Yeah yeah, um. And you're about to
hear why dear listeners, because we're about to talk about
all the things that happened to a corpse after death,
which we've done before, but we need to go over again.
Mummies are cool, though, they are very cool. So Chuck,
let's say that you were stabbed in the stomach enough
times so that you could not move any longer. You
(01:53):
couldn't walk back home. It was out in the woods,
and the one person you're with, the very person who
stabbed you, left you there to die. You bleed out.
You're dead. Things start happening to your body, right, yeah,
pretty quickly. Up first is autolysis. Yes, that is uh,
that's kind of gruesome. That's when your organs that have
digestive enzymes actually say, well, this is what we do,
(02:17):
so we're gonna start digesting the organs right and not
like my stomach is eating itself because I'm hungry, Like,
my stomach is actually eating itself. It's rupturing and oozing
and it's it's it's being reduced to nothing. Um while
that's going on. And then actually, I think if I
remember correctly, that kind of helps kickstart the process of
(02:39):
puture faction. Right, yeah, autolysis starts within a few hours
after you're dead. The body, the body knows. And if
you want like a really um big overview of this
or in depth look at what happens to the body
immediately after death, you should listen to a Rigor Mortis
podcast if you haven't already body farms. I talked about
it in there too, So yes, intra faction, you're right,
(03:01):
is followed by or follows autolysis. And that is when
bacteria does its a little job and reduces everything to
a skeleton. And you know, depending where you are, it's
gonna happen in a few months, right, depending on where
you are. Now, We as human beings are a subtropical species, right, Chuck,
You know that, sure? So we are designed, if you
(03:23):
believe in that kind of thing, to decomposed, decomposed most
readily in a warm humid climate. That's where the bacteria
that breaks down our tissue lives or thrives moisture warmth.
If you have cold, dry, things change a little bit.
Like a refrigerator exactly. Um, which is a good place
(03:44):
to store body if you want to preserve it, or
food if you want to eat it. It's a good
point to your body if you want to eat it.
For an in depth flick at that, you might want
to listen to our cannibalism podcast though. That's right, Um,
But let's say you don't have a refrigerator. Nature provides it,
are you? On some occasions there's you'd see the ice man, right, yeah,
(04:06):
see the ice man. Yeah, that's the ice man. Yeah,
and the Italian ounce. This dude is very well preserved
natural mummy. It was amazing. Died and basically got buried
in ice and kind of stayed that way. Yeah. I
think they have the impression that he fell into a
crevasse died, but it was during like a blizzard maybe
and he was covered with snow and ice that stuck
(04:28):
around for millennia. Um. But he's so well preserved. You
can see the tattoos on this um skin and still yeah,
and well, and we knew. Hey, they tattooed people years
ago exactly, little window into what life was like for
ice Man. Yeah, he um he was. He had I
think a nice little set of arrows and his bow
and copper age European guy. I think he had a
(04:51):
wallet sized photo of of you as well of me. Yeah,
he was from the future. That's my that's what I think.
You just blew my mind, Chuck good So ice as
we talked about the fossils too, Um was a is
a very good preservant. But nothing does it. Oh, Pete
Boggs too. You remember I finally took you that picture
(05:13):
of tolin Man. About Pete again, if you have not
gone and looked at tole Man, it's awesome, Like his
whiskers are still there. And he lived a couple of
thousand years ago. Right, what's his name? Did they name
him just man? I would name him pet terrible. Um.
So those two are pretty good. But the money, the
(05:34):
natural money preservant is sand. Yeah, I had no idea.
The reason why sand is such a great preservative is
because it actually wicks away and absorbs and just removes
the um any type of humidity in the body, which
allows the body to desiccate, which means that there is
no place for bacteria to live, which means the tissues,
(05:57):
the tissue remains intact. And that's all about a mummy,
is it's a it's a corpse with its tissue intact. Well,
and this kind of kick started the whole mummification artificial
mummification craze in Egypt because at first they buried bodies.
They weren't in caskets, they were you know, buried in
the hot sand, and that preserved the body for so long.
(06:19):
They said, well, hey, if the body is preserved, then
that means the spirits preserved. And this all of a sudden,
we have new views on the afterlife and life. Right,
So what they decided to do and this was so
what I guess what you've just said though, was that
the mummification, the whole concept of mummies that we have
and that was so ingrained in the Egyptian culture, happened
(06:41):
by accident, right yeah. Um, so they started they figured
this out, So they start purposefully burying people in the
sand with the intent of them being mummified, right, Um.
But the problem is somewhere along the way they began
to have horrible thoughts of their dead. Well, it's has
choked with sand. So they started to say, maybe we
(07:03):
should put some sort of barrier up in between the
corpse and the sand. And that led to caskets, right, Yeah,
started with just like a wicker covering. Than that eventually
led to wooden boxes. Uh, but here's the rub. Now
the body is not preserved. Now the body rots. Well,
it's just a normal corpse. Now you put a barrier
(07:26):
between the body and the preservant in the form of
a tomb. So what's the Egyptian to do then? Well,
the Egyptians, being the very pious culture that they were,
and the very um intuitive and smart culture that they were,
you should for that, you should go read um did
the Greeks get all their ideas from the Africans? Good article?
Did you write them? Yeah? Did we do that, podcat man,
(07:47):
let's do that, okay. Um. They they decided that they
needed to rectify their um, their religious beliefs with their
um problem. They're they're need to preserve bodies. And what
did they do, Well, they said, maybe we can replicate
this natural process that we've discovered through man made artificial means.
(08:11):
And yeah, it's kind of like it's called embombing Josh.
And they actually figured out Chuck that like um, one
of the one of the problems with the desiccation, the
natural desiccation and the desert um was that the skin
turned like this crisp brown, like you know, over baked chicken.
It's exactly what it looks like actually. And Um, with
(08:34):
these embalming techniques that they eventually mastered, they could they
could preserve a body better than it could be preserved naturally,
which is man conquering nature, conquering death. Even well, uh,
they didn't have a huge success at first. They they
would embalm the bodies mainly to keep it away from
(08:55):
the elements, wrap it in linen, soaked in resin, and
they would create a nice little shape pola forums it
looked kind of like people. But that didn't really do
a whole lot because the bandages didn't really halt the composition.
They basically figured out that it happens from the inside out.
It took him, It took him a few centuries of
not millennia, basically wrapping it up and it's just disintegrating
within the bandages at first, right, But those bandages are
(09:18):
important because they stick around pretty much the whole time,
same with the resin right. Yes, so those two very
early embalming techniques are mummification techniques. UM stuck around, but
it was a big leap when they figured out, oh
wait a minute is going on inside and so we
need to start addressing that by removing organs. Right, And
it's about here I think that we we hit the
(09:40):
Middle Kingdom and like the the mummies that we think
of were produced in the from the eighteenth to twentieth
dynasties of the Middle Kingdom. Yeah, that was when the
like the heyday of mummification, right right, which was um
between fifteen seventy and ten seventy five b C. The
mummies that we think of, the ones that are still
around like really well preserved today, they they were preserved
(10:04):
during this time, right, right. So what do you do
when when you realize that everything bad is happening to
a corpse from the inside out? How do you how
do you address that? Should we just walk through the
process one by one, the gruesome process? Yeah, okay, the
first thing you do is you take it and it varies,
(10:25):
you know, the different processes and within the processes, they
had things that they would say, sort of like religious
rights that they would go through as well. It's very
sacred process. But they would take the body generally to
the red Land desert region is not near a whole
lot of people, so people aren't grossed out, but it
is near the Nile River. They needed the Nile River
to well, we'll see that in a second step one.
(10:47):
Step one. You need the Nile for step one. They
think they did in an open tents obviously to get
some good ventilation going. And uh, the first place they
took the body was to the Ibou, the place of purification. Yeah,
that was basically the Nile or the place where they
place near the Nile where they rensed the body with
you washed the body off. It's like a rebirth symbol
(11:10):
of rebirth. Right, so the the the corpse was hastened
or some of the spirit was hastened in the afterlife,
and we should probably stay here so it doesn't get
too confusing. There were three spirits um that the Egyptians
believed comprised a person, right, the ka, the ba, and
the ak. Yeah, okay, it's always tricky to pronounce that, right,
(11:34):
So I think um with this purification process the co
or the or the bar or the ah, we're moved
along to the to the next world. But the ka
that was the one that was um inextricably linked with
the corpse, which became the whole reason for mummification. As
(11:54):
long as the corps was preserved, the co was preserved
and the afterlife could you know, the person could live
in the afterlife. But once the corpse died, the co
died and that second death was final, which is why
they wanted to preserve bodies in the first place. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. It's like the opposite of ashes to
ashes and dusted us. Right. So, after they've washed the
(12:16):
body and sort of reborn it and the rivers of
the nile, Uh, they carried the body to the per
Kniffer and that is the house of mummification. And this
is kind of where This is the basement of the
Fisher house. Basically huh and six ft under the Fishers.
Oh yeah, this is in the basement. This is where
Rico and the gang would get to work. Um. They
(12:38):
would lay it on a wooden table. The body. Uh.
They removed the brain by hammering a chisel through the
bone of the nose, you know. I knew that already
before this article. The Christian slater E's and like he's
in like one of the creep shows or um Amazing
Amazing stories or tales from the Crypto movie Pump up
the volume. It might have been that, but I think
(13:00):
it was like a smaller um vignette, like a mini
movie within the larger movie. It's called like a Lot
number nine or whatever. And Leaning the Cube, I think
it was. Now that's called Brotherhood of the Tiger now
I think they Yeah. Anyway, they there's a mummy who's
hell bent on taking other people's brains using these hooks
(13:20):
or whatever. Well, and that's exactly what they do. They
make a nose hole basically larger than the nostrils they
in sort of big hook, iron hook and start scooping
it out. Eventually they go down to a spoon and
eventually they just rents out the remaining bits of brain.
And what's funny is so hold on they discard the
brain because they thought, I don't know why we have
this stuff in our head, but we probably don't need
(13:41):
it in the afterlife, which is kind of unusual for
the Egyptians because they preserved organs, you know, but the brain.
And what's what's funny though, Like I think what we
just kind of meander past that we should kind of
um meditate on for a second, Chuck, is that they
get to a point where they filled the head with water.
I imagine close the nose in the mouth and shake
(14:02):
the head around to slash all this stuff out, and
then lean the head over and let all the last
bits come out. That's how I would do it. And
I wonder if they did shots of that stuff as
like part of the ceremony, I would draw the line there. Well,
they probably just thought, I don't know, they didn't even
know what the brain was. Yeah, that's true, that's just waste.
So the brains out, Josh. Then they take a blade
(14:25):
made from obsidian sacred stone, cut a little incision on
the left side and reach in and start pulling out
the organs that they can get to and then preserving those,
like you said, except for the kidneys, because they didn't
think they were important either, which they were, you know,
I mean, the kidneys are important, but it's not like
brain important. Well, I mean, you need kidneys to live.
(14:47):
I'm sure they preserve the appendence you need, all of
you that was probably the most holy of the organs.
So they actually when they preserve these things, they would um,
they would wrap them in uh in resin strip of linen. Right,
Basically they would mummify each organ and then they put
them in in canopic jars. Basically it was like here's
(15:09):
your body, and then also here are your organs. They'd
leave the heart though, because they thought the heart was
you know, linked to the soul and the spirit. And
they're kind of on the money there, I think. So
these organs take up space in our chest and abdominal cavities. Um,
so they would actually um stuff the body with like
(15:32):
incense and other materials as well. Right, yeah, well, first
they'd rent it once they like I forgot, they take
out the lungs to the abdomen yeah right right there
you can't get along little side slit, and then they
would rent the chest cavity with palm wine and then
they would stuff it actually basically straw what I didn't say,
(15:54):
what actually just said other materials. How would you straw?
Maybe frankinsense, little mirror, Yeah, just to complete the trilogy,
straw franken cent sin mur that that kept the body
from like caving in on itself, basically containing a little
bit of shape. And then here is the key. This
(16:15):
is the key to momification. And as a matter of fact,
I was just gonna say it now. I found it
on the internet. There is a step by step, very
easy to follow recipe on UM. I think WICKI how
which I don't normally go on, but it's the only
place I can find a recipe for mommifying a chicken
using the Egyptian method, and it calls for UM natron, right, Yeah,
(16:41):
that's the key. Natron is this UM basically a compound
that the Egyptians figured out they could gather and and
and combine from the Nile, which is basically baking soda
sodium bicarbonate and um table salt sodium chloride. You mix
the two together and it becomes this perfect person of it.
So they would put nature in powder, which is like
(17:03):
this just accelerated the technique of mommification like by light
years UM and they would cover the body with this
stuff and leave it and it would just completely dry
the body out. Right. Yeah, this took about forty days.
They had to guard the body while this was going on, obviously,
because they didn't want vultures digging through the natren for
what lies beneath. After the forty days, they move the
(17:26):
body then to the wabet, which is the house of purification. Yeah,
and call that incense and the stuffing out, refill it
with the nature in resin, soaked linen and other materials
again whatever these mysterious things are. Then they would sew
all the incisions up, cover the skin with resin, and
then say, hey, it's time to wrap this puppy. Yeah.
(17:49):
And this is where we get the idea for the mummy,
our modern idea of a mummy always wearing like they
are always coming off. You can just see the eyes,
maybe teeth or something. So this is where we're at
there at the bandaging procedure that thirty five or forty days,
while um the nature and powder was doing its work,
(18:10):
working away all of the basically acting as the desk
knt Um, the family of the deceased was going around
town going do you have any linens we can have forever? Uh?
Do you have some linens we can have and cut
you like your linen's to spend eternity in the heavens
above with our dead. Um. They collected about four thousand
(18:32):
square feet just top the top of my head. That's
about how much. They gathered um of linen and would
bring it to the embalmers, and the embalmers would say, hey,
we like this piece that pieces horrible. Um, you're really
gonna bury your your dad in this, And they would
take the best stuff and they would cut it into
or they would tear him into strips three to eight
(18:53):
inches wide a bandages, and they would start the rapping,
which would take a little while, right, Yeah, it takes
uh week or two, I guess probably depending on how
big the body is. Common sense. Start with the hands
and feet. You wrap all This is the initial under wrapping,
I guess. You wrap everything individually, each little finger, each
will toe everything's wrapped. And then once everything is wrapped individually,
(19:16):
they do a whole body wrap ah, applying new layers,
coating the linen with again the hot resin to keep
everything in place, uttering spell. Sometimes they would wrap amulets
over different parts of the body, wrap it up in
there with you, protect you in the next world, that
kind of thing, right, and then pressto chango you are
(19:40):
a mummy. And before we go further the process we've
just described this really ordinate, wonderful, lengthy process where you
would think about it like there's so many There were
a lot of Egyptians running around, and a lot of
them died on any given day, and there was a
lot of work to be done. So this process that
(20:01):
we just described was for the people who had lots
of money. For some reason, the wealthy have always been revered, right,
and I've also gotten special treatment, right right. Um, if
you were just an ordinary schmoke like me or Chuck,
you were going to get the budget package, which is
basically like instead of like carefully removing all of the
(20:22):
organs each one, they would inject oil like this oil
mixture into your cavities. Let it sit for a few days. Um,
it was to stop up all your orifices first leak out,
thank you. So I don't know how they did that.
I guess with other materials that you right, So they
(20:43):
would stop you up full of oil, let it, let
you sit for a few days, and then unstop your
orifices and let all the oil drain out and it
would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it.
It's a lot easier, a lot faster. So even this
many thousands of years ago. You get what you pay
for exactly. That's pretty sad. Yeah, it's always been a
(21:04):
budget package. Or maybe that's a good thing that it
wasn't only just reserved, like if you don't have any money,
you just can't get Mummified's the way to go. They thought,
you know what, let's think of it a cheaper way
to do this for you folks. Let's just fill you
up with the oil, stop up your orifices, and give
you a good shake. So um, you're you're prepared. You're
all wrapped. However, they got your organs out there out
(21:26):
you're bandaged, um, and you're now about to be outfitted
what's called a cartonage cage, which is kind of like
a breastplate, um, some cool like forearm armor, leg armor,
pretty much this thing that's gonna hold your body together
for a while. And a funerary mask, which is like
(21:47):
the famous masks we think of when we think of
like King tut like it's a death mask. And these
were extremely important because they directed the spirit the car
to the right body your words. So it was in
a person's visage or possibly that of a god, but
the spirit would be in on you know what to
(22:08):
look for. They would know that. That's how they knew.
This guy is supposed to supposed to either look like
Josh or Anubis. Either way, I think that's him right
away there, so let's grab him. And speaking of Anubis,
you would be committed to your tomb uh following a
funeral procession where you were carried in your sue right,
(22:29):
which that's what you think of with King Tutt. That's
the casket that looks like a person, like the gold
casket in the shape of a human. Let's a suet
um that would be carried to your tomb, and there
would be a priest dressed as the jackal god Anubis.
Um there were there was the ceremony of the mouth,
(22:50):
which is pretty cool because there was some sort of
weird understanding. I guess that Um, you had died and
now certain things had to be stored, and the ceremony
of the mouth was um. This um passing over of
sacred objects to like the across the suet's face. The
caskets face UM. And it would restore your five senses
(23:14):
because you need that exactly so you're placed. And this
is weird, Chuck, did you find this odd? That your
casket was placed leaned up against the wall. Yeah, it
almost like I would do that while I was getting
everything ready, and then I would lay it down. So
it almost made me think that they kind of forgot
and they say, oh, well, we left that first one
leaning against the wall, so I guess that's the way
(23:35):
we do it. But that's not true. I'm sure they
had a very good reason, probably because it was easier
to just walk up right out of there. Well, yeah,
I would think they wanted to leave it upright, but
standing it upright they didn't have, like the perfectly level
floor probably wasn't too secure, so they just gave it
a little lean, sure, little help, which is far less
(23:57):
secure than just laying it down on the floor. Yeah. Um,
following that, you are your furniture. Don't forget your canopic
jar of organs late next to you little food maybe? Sure? Um,
your furniture, Um, basically the stuff you're gonna need in
the next life to be comfortable, and your set. Your
tomb is sealed up, and it's probably inscribed with something
(24:20):
along the lines of as for anybody who shall enter
this tomb in his impurity, I shall wring his neck
as a bird's there's a standard um mummy curse. Yeah,
a mummy curse on the tomb. Yeah. People became in
the nineteen twenties Howard Carter dug up King Tut's tomb
and people were just crazy for mummies at the time.
(24:41):
Westerners are like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting.
This cursed thing is so neat. Uh. Laurel and Hardy
are doing mummy curse movies and uh. A microbiologist from
Germany name Guitard Cramer or Cramer Uh. He said there
may be something to this cursed thing because they bury
people of food produce his mold spores. So when they
(25:01):
unearthed this tomb, all these mold sports are released into
the air and it might kill you. So it's not
that there's something to the curse, but it could lead
people to tie the two together. Unearthed tomb, then you die. Certainly,
there's something weird about the Carter expedition who Um unearthed
King Tut's tomb in two because eleven of the people
who were involved, not necessarily present, but involved, UM died
(25:25):
within seven years. I think eleven people in a canary
his canary died like UM right right when they entered
the tomb and Copra ate it. That's bad luck, it is,
and then it just went downhill from there. Um. So
there's all sorts of explanations, but it's also um oddly
intriguing and like you said, egypt Mania gripped the West.
(25:46):
Oh yeah, they loved it all right, um. And there
was actually unraveling parties where people would get their hands
on mummies and then like unbandage them, see what's in there,
which is like, that's not what you do with a
dead body. Yeah, it's bad luck too. So that pretty
much is the Egyptian mummy, and that's what we mainly
think of. But they weren't the first people to do
(26:07):
this kind of thing in the in the interesting yeah,
they the first. The oldest mummies actually on the planet
are from northern Chile, the Chinchorro people Cinchero, let's go
to Cinchorro. Uh this they started doing this about two
thousand years before the Egyptians. But they were not very
much like uh, the Egyptians. They basically dismembered and disemboweled
(26:31):
the body, put it back together again, sewed it up,
and then covered it with black mud. Well they put
it back together with like straw and sticks, and that's
what they had. It was like they made qupy dolls
out of like these bodies, basically covered it with black
mud and shaped it into a human form. Uh. But
they believe that this wasn't necessarily done to preserve the
(26:55):
body for the afterlife. Maybe it was more for the
people left on the planet Earth to mourn the death
of their loved one keep them around a little longer,
which is very sweet because they saw evidence of like
retouching of the paint, signs of wear and tear, so
that you know, basically they were kept in the households
for a little while. They think basically as statutes, freaky
(27:16):
freaky statues. And that was five thousand BC, which is
two thousand years before the Egyptians came onto the scene
at all. It's right, um, And the would you say
the Chinchorro people. I think I went with Chinchorro, but
someone will point that out if I'm wrong. Um, They're
(27:37):
not the only ones in South America who got into
modification either. The Incas very famously did as well. They
had a little habit of sacrificing children to the gods. Um,
and they cultural relativism chucked. They would um through this
process like the child and the child's family were just
(27:57):
treated like like royalty before this, like it was a
high honor to be chosen to be sacrificed to the gods. Um.
And they would get the child really wasted on this
fermented corn concoction, take the child up to the cave.
Sometimes I think they would whack the kid over the head,
(28:17):
or other times they would get the child so wasted
that um, they just would leave them there in the
cold temperatures, exposed to the freezing temperatures, and the child
would die of exposure. I can't see jerks about this,
you can, um. But the there's a very famous mummy
called the Maiden, who is a fifteen year old girl
and she was sacrificed as thanks to the gods for
(28:41):
a really good corn harvest by the Incas in Peru
five dred years ago. Did you see that picture I
sent you. It's like looking at a girl who's sleeping,
but she's been dead for five hundred years, like you
you if you've been to South America as I know
you have, or Central America, like she looks just like
one of those girls you might see down there like
Central American indigenous person. She's probably short. Then she looks
(29:05):
kind of shorty. That'd be funny. She's like six too.
But then moving on up, there's also one and it
didn't make it into this article, but chuck, I've been
there myself. Wanna want to. Mexico has a mummy museum
and they have the world's smallest mummy. I think it
might have been a fetus, but they were all naturally
(29:26):
mummified um to the great surprise of the nineteenth century
townspeople who had to move a graveyard and found like, okay,
there's a lot of mummies. How big it was very
small object uh coffee cup, coffee cup, standard coffee cups.
But then there's like people. They were still wearing their
(29:46):
suits and it's it's really amazing. You walk into this
little Mexican building and there's just dead people everywhere, just
behind this glass. It's very neat. If you ever go
to Wanna want to Mexico, you have to go to
the mummy museum. I think I should. Yeah. Lady Chang China,
Chinese were they were lousy with mummies. Yeah, they loved
(30:08):
the mummify people. She was an aristocrat from about two
thousand years ago, and she is believed to be about
the best preserved ancient mummy so far. Did you see
her picture? Yeah, so their tongue sticking up pretty well
mummified and her hair still. Yeah, she was. They haven't
studied her a whole lot, the Chinese haven't, so they
don't know exactly how she was prepared, but they do
(30:33):
think that mercury and the embalming fluid might have something
to do with it. Yeah, then I would imagine that
will do mercury, Yeah sure. And um also in China,
mummies have kind of rewritten history a little bit. UM,
some very very ancient mummies from UM one thousand BC
before one thousand BC, UM, they found some people of
(30:56):
Indo Iranian descent. You know, they linked them to Um
like basically Mesopotamia through tattoos and like other implements that
they had in the shape of their face, the way
they looked, and they figured out like, wait a minute,
these people were like Indo European traders, what are they
doing here? And they just made their way to settle
(31:16):
right in in the deserts of China before the Han
dynasty ever showed up. So that kind of changed things
a little bit. I'm sure. Uh, if we talk about mummies,
we got to talk about the more modern day mummies
because of the big interest in mummification thanks to tut
being found was the big one. That's right around the
(31:39):
time Lenin died in Russia and they said, you know what,
let's preserve Lenin and disclaiming the Kremlin. So that's exactly
what they did. And we do not know exactly how
because it's an ancient Russian secret. I don't know about ancient,
but it's a Russian secret, and they it's ongoing because
they continue to him in a preservative bath every now
(32:02):
and then, and he's wears a waterproof suit. That's right.
And if you've ever seen pictures of Linen or av parone,
did they look pretty lifelike. But hers was hers is
way cool. They basically replaced all the fluids in her
body with wax, right, which would be a very modern
take on the ancient practice. There's also um incorruptible corpses
(32:25):
of the Catholic faith. It's basically a person who is
so pure on earth that they their body just didn't
didn't rot. And there's example those there's one. He's like
a prince. He's like a child prince. I think he
died in like he died more than a thousand years
(32:46):
ago or about a thousand years ago, um, and his
his body is totally preserved and there's no evidence that
he was embalmed or anything like that. They don't understand
that there are some bodies out there that just the
five logic that I wrote an article and you should
read it. It's a miracle. How can a courts be incorruptible?
We need to keep in track of these awesome ideas.
(33:08):
Where where's our person? Where's our boy Charlie or no,
our boy Friday Charlie uh and then Josh, finally we
have In the nineteen seventies, some scientists discovered something called plasticization,
and that is when all of the water and lipids
in the body cells replaced with polymers and you basically
(33:32):
become like plastic, very flexible and durable. You don't decompose,
and you don't stink too bad. And that is used
to preserve bodies, mainly for anatomical research at this point,
or for bodies world or bodies the exhibit I have have
you've been no, I've never been but that's how they
do it. It It is really something. I mean, you're right
there up on this corpse missing its skin and like
(33:55):
it is a dead person, um and it's really interesting.
There's one the one that I went to in Atlanta.
It's two eyeballs and they're connected to the spinal cord
which is going down and then the coming off the
spinal cord are the major nerves of the central nervous system.
And that's it. And it's just laid out perfectly, really
(34:16):
kind of surprising. I'm shocked that I haven't been to
that yet. It's pretty cool. It's definitely worth going to.
I did the dialogue in the Dark thing. I have
not been there. That's next door. That was that kid.
You know. I was a little disappointed. Yeah, not in
the exhibit itself, but the way the way they do it. Uh.
I think it could have been like really awesome, but
(34:37):
the way they do it, it wasn't as awesome as
it could have been. Just gonna take you. Me and
her sister went and she said they would have liked it.
Put there was this very loud, drunk woman who kept
like falling into people. What they wanted to know? You
can do about that near the dark weather, you could
just like kick her in the shin and run away.
We should mention Bob a Dr Bob Bryer real quick though.
He is a Egyptologist who or said, you know what,
(35:01):
I want to try and replicate the Egyptian technique. And
he did it, Yeah, with the chicken, and he did
it was pretty successful at the University of Maryland School
of Medicine. And one of the things he learned from
doing this that the uh, the way the body ends
up looking as a result of the mummification process, not
the fact that it's been in the ground for thousands
(35:23):
and thousands, like the shriveled, wrinkled look. Yeah. Yeah, so
that's one thing I learned. That's a big thing to learn, though,
I mean, think about it. That's Egyptology hasn't really advanced
much in the last fifty years. And it not that
I know is I never Aldo didn't find squat, No,
he didn't know that wasn't he Aldo her Aldo looked
for um components. I watched that one. That was fun.
(35:44):
I was a youngster and I was so excited and yeah,
but it's so disappointed when it was just a total disaster. Yeah,
well it's it for mummies, right, chucky anymore? I'm I'm
are you mummied out? All right? Um? If you want
to learn more about mummies, check out m you m
M I E s in the handy search bar, How
stuff works dot com. You can learn how to mummify
(36:05):
a chicken on wiki how and um what else? I
think there might be a website for the mummies of
wanna want to? That's I think g U A n
A j u A t oh. Maybe sounds good at me,
does it? You know? I think Matt and Rachel from
Cool Stuff in the Planet did a thing on the
(36:26):
Egyptian Mummy or not Egyptian Mummy Museum? Want to want
to Mummy Museum? Yes, Cool Stuff on the Planet check
out that is definitely worth watching as well. It's worth
watching anyway. And I said handy search bar somewhere in there,
which means I guess time for listener mail. Uh hi,
Chuck and Josh and Jerry. My name is Maddie. I'm
twelve years old. I love your podcast. I wait all
(36:48):
day at school to get home so I can check
for new podcasts. They always help me fall asleep, but
not because you're boring, but because it gets my brain
thinking and the brain gets tired, that's cool. Uh was
wondering if you give a shout out to my best bud, Casey.
Casey has a tumor in his leg and is in
a wheelchair. He tells me he is very miserable, but
at least he gets to listen to me talk about
(37:09):
you guys. And fun fact, he also has a pet
rooster named Louis, and Lewis is house strained, so he
just runs around the house. That is awesome house strain chicken.
So please give Louis, I'm sorry Casey a shout and Lewis.
While it make him feel better, it would make his
day or even his year. And tell me which podcast
you're gonna put it on, because I am just twelve
(37:29):
and some of them are inappropriate. Oh was this inappropriate?
I don't know. Probably not this shaking the brain part out.
We'll figure it out, Okay, I'll tell him to just
listen to the listener mail and let his parents listen
to the And also a suggestion the infamous story of
that French queen who said let the meat cake. I
(37:49):
don't remember her name's marine that with Kristen Dunns. And
remember I do not have Facebook, so please answer me
by emails, she says. And then she is a d
D or t T it's d D. And then her
signature is potato in a mushroom for Maggie. I don't
(38:10):
even know what that means. All the kids are saying
these days. All right, potato in a mushroom? Everybody, you said, Maggie,
it's Maddie, right, Maddie. Okay, Maddie, thanks for the email. Maddie.
Did we give a shout out to Lewis and Casey
Well o, Casey, We hope you're feeling better, but I'm
sorry to hear about that, and hope you're up and
around before you know it. Take care, Lewis. Yes, if
you're an egyptologist and you have some good mummy stories,
(38:32):
we want to hear it. You know what, if you
have any good mummy story, we want to hear it.
Wrap it up in an email and send that email
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
(38:55):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
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