"We knew the name of the embalming products from the deciphering of ancient Egyptian writings," explained Egyptologist Susanne Beck, in a statement from the German University of Tübingen, "but until today we could only guess the substances behind these names".

Excavations led by his late colleague Ramadan Hussein at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo in 2016 unearthed an exceptional collection of pottery used in a burial chamber.

In Saqqara, this funerary chamber called "wabet" is at the bottom of a well, 13 meters deep.

After the evisceration of the deceased and the removal of his brain, the embalmers, accompanied by dedicated priests, washed the body there and prepared it to avoid decomposition preventing, according to their beliefs, any subsequent life.

After treatment lasting up to 70 days, some of the mummies transited to a second well, 30 meters deep, to begin their journey to the afterlife.

The team of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen and Munich, assisted by the National Research Center in Cairo, analyzed with state-of-the-art instruments the residues in 31 containers of the "wabet", dated to the 26th Dynasty, more than 2,500 years old, and was able to compare them to those identified in vessels found in adjacent tombs.

The discovery is exceptional because inscriptions on the pots provide instructions for the use of the preparations.

"To wash", with a mixture of oils or tars of conifers.

"To make its smell pleasant", with ruminant fat and shrub resin.

Or for the "head treatment", the part of the body that is the subject of the greatest care, with no less than three concoctions.

Pottery containing the preparations needed for embalming at the Saqqara site, south of Cairo, in a photo provided by archaeologist Susanne Beck © M.ABDELGHAFFAR / UNIVERSITY OF TUBINGEN/SAQQARA SAITE TOMBS PROJECT/AFP

The analyses, carried out by Maxime Rageot, archaeologist at the University of Tübingen and first author of the study published in Nature, reveal "the use of substances all having biological properties useful for the preservation of human tissues and the reduction of bad smells”, he explained in a press briefing.

"Engine of Globalization"

These analyzes also correct beliefs about certain substances, Egyptologists having had for a long time only ancient written sources - Egyptian papyri and Greek authors - and analyzes of mummies.

Like what the ancient Egyptians called antiu, long assimilated to myrrh, an aromatic gum.

It is actually a mixture of cedar oil, cypress and animal fat.

With a practice of embalming dating back to prehistoric times, and which became more complex about a thousand years before our era, the ancient Egyptians "had accumulated an enormous knowledge" in the preservation of bodies, said Philipp Stockhammer, professor of archeology at the German Max Planck Institute for Archaeoanthropology.

According to him, they had an acute knowledge of the properties of their products and their associations.

In order, for example, once the body has been dried with natron salts, to prevent its immediate colonization by microbes which would have devoured the skin.

One of the researchers' biggest surprises was to identify resins, such as elemi or dammar, coming from tropical forests in Southeast Asia and possibly also in Africa.

Added to this are pistachio resins and olive oils from the Mediterranean arc, which "shows that embalming has been a driving force behind globalization", according to Professor Stockhammer.

Artist's impression of a scene of the embalming of a dead person at the Egyptian site of Saqqara, south of Cairo © NIKOLA NEVENOV / Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich/AFP

The diversity of substances identified at Saqqara shows that the embalmers "were very interested in experimenting and obtaining other oils and resins", according to him.

They took advantage of a trade route with Asia and Southeast Asia, which already existed a thousand years before our era and which linked present-day Indonesia to Egypt via India, then the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

It remains to discover the exact properties of the substances that the embalmers used to preserve their dead, if not to guarantee them eternal life.

© 2023 AFP