The World's Oldest Known Mummification Recipe and It's Intense

 

(Richard T. Nowitz/Getty Images)

Although ancient examples of mummification can tell us a lot about the process, there are still some unanswered questions about how the Egyptians prepared their dead for the afterlife.

Researchers have discovered an original 'how to' manual, hidden inside an ancient text, that explains the crucial steps to embalming and creating a mummy in an exciting discovery.

The mummification guide was discovered on a 3,500-year-old piece of papyrus known as the Papyrus Louvre-Carlsberg manuscript, so named because half of it is in the Louvre Museum in Paris and the other half is in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Experts only had two initial texts on mummification to work with until this new text was discovered. In ancient Egypt, embalming was considered a sacred art, and only a few experts were qualified in the technique, which was generally handed down orally from person to person.

The face covering process revealed in the new research. (Ida Christensen)

According to Egyptologist Sofie Schidt, the text reads like a memory aid, so the intended readers must have been experts who needed to be reminded of these specifics, such as unguent recipes and the uses of different types of bandages.

In her PhD thesis, Schidt outlined the text in detail, and the complete Louvre papyrus will be published next year.

Section of the papyrus. (The Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, University of Copenhagen)

A list of instructions for embalming the face of the deceased person, which was done with a piece of red linen coated in a special plant-based solution, is one of the information that Schidt has extracted from the paper.

The solution included aromatic substances as well as binders to hold the mixture intact, and the saturated fabric was supposed to protect the face from insects and bacteria while still smelling good. This phase has never been recorded before, but it correlates to some of the mummified remains discovered.

This manuscript also outlines the entire 70-day embalming schedule, which is divided into two parts: a 35-day drying period and a 35-day wrapping period, both of which are divided into four-day intervals. Following the removal of the organs and the brain, a mixture called natron was widely added to the body. Schidt states that the use of natron was not specified in this particular document.

According to Schidt, a mummy procession marked these days, celebrating the success of restoring the deceased's corporeal dignity, which amounted to 17 processions throughout the embalming era.

To keep insects and scavengers away, the body was coated with cloth and overlaid with straw filled with aromatics in between the four-day intervals.

The Carlsberg Collection half of the text has been examined and translated for the first time, and it adds to the details already interpreted from the Louvre Museum half, covering herbal medicine and skin swellings.

The papyrus is now an even more important source on illness and health in ancient Egypt, including which diseases were thought to be the work of which gods and how they could be combated. It measures about six metres (nearly 20 feet) in length.

 

The Papyrus Louvre-Carlsberg manuscript predates the two previously discovered mummification manuals, making it the earliest record of the practice. It also provides information not found in the other two articles.

Many of the embalming techniques mentioned in this papyrus have been left out of the two later manuals, despite the fact that the details are extremely detailed, according to Schidt.

Although the research has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, it is the cornerstone for Schidt's PhD thesis.