"We know that folks in the Sudan didn't follow the exact same methodology as people that were in Alexandria."įollow Tia Ghose on Twitter. "A lot of people have taken the idea that it was all done the same way, but over the course of 3,000 years? Heck no," Hunt told LiveScience. The findings show just how varied embalming techniques were in the ancient world, said David Hunt, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
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They were also covered with packets of natron, a naturally occurring salt, left to dry out for many days, packed with linen or wood shavings, and sometimes perfumed with scented items, Wade said. Almost all the others were pulled out through the nose, Wade's team described in another study detailed in the August 2011 issue of the same journalĪfter the evisceration, the bodies were rubbed down with a mild antiseptic such as palm wine. "The elites need some way to distinguish themselves from the people that they're ruling," he said.Īnd whereas Herodotus had suggested mummies had their brains removed and discarded, Wade and his colleagues found about a fifth of the brains were left inside the mummies' skulls. The removal of the heart seems to coincide with the transition period when the middle class gained access to mummification, so getting to keep the heart may have become a status symbol after that point, Wade said. Only a quarter of mummies had their hearts left in place. In addition, there wasn't much indication that cedar oil enemas were used. experience even more appealing, for example for the recognition of the visitor. The team found that rich and poor alike most commonly had the transabdominal slit performed, although for the elites evisceration was sometimes performed through a slit through the anus. Kit includes compound fractures, contusions, lacerations, evisceration.
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They also conducted CT scans and 3D reconstructions on seven mummies. To see how eviscerations really took place, Wade and his colleague Andrew Nelson looked through the literature, finding details on how 150 mummies were embalmed over thousands of years in ancient Egypt. "A lot of his accounts sound more like tourist stories, so we're reticent to take everything he said at face value," Wade told LiveScience.
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In addition, Herodotus claimed the brain was removed during embalming and other accounts suggested the heart was always left in place. For the lower class, mummies had organs eaten away with an enema of cedar oil, which was thought to be similar to turpentine, Herodotus reported. Herodotus described multiple levels of embalming: The elites, he said, got a slit through the belly, through which organs were removed.