The secrets of the conservation of mummies are revealed a little more.

Resins from Asia, cedar oils from Lebanon, bitumen from the Dead Sea: a study published Wednesday in

Nature

reveals the ingredients used by the ancient Egyptians for their mummies.

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

Thirty containers analyzed

Excavations carried out in 2016 in the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo unearthed an exceptional collection of pottery used in a burial chamber.

This piece 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 (Germany), assisted by the National Research Center in Cairo, analyzed the residues in 31 containers of the "wabet", dated to the 26th dynasty, more than 2,500 years ago. , and was able to compare them to those identified in vessels found in adjacent tombs.

Oils, tars, grease

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.

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



Advanced knowledge

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.

This is particularly the case for 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, which became more complex about a thousand years before our era, the ancient Egyptians "had accumulated enormous knowledge" in the preservation of bodies, said Philipp Stockhammer, professor of archeology at the German Max-Planck Institute for Archaeoanthropology.

They had, according to him, an acute knowledge of the properties of their products and their associations.

An influence on trade as far as Asia

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

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.

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