Scientists discover the chemical materials and secrets applied to corpses in a 2700-year-old mummification workshop.
The mummification process was a very complex and spiritual medical process to turn the bodies into statues and make everyone ready for their way to the heavens. The process required a number of specialized skills, a long list of different ingredients, and highly skilled embalmers who have deep religious and chemical knowledge.
The new evidence emerged from a 2700-year-old (664 B.C.E.–525 B.C.E.) burial complex south of Cairo called Saqqara. A shaft within the underground mummification workshop had been carefully filled with sand, and rocks plus dozens of highly preserved embalming vessels. With further examination, a major breakthrough was made when comparing the Egyptian mummies to the materials found in the vessels.
The analysis indicated traces of beeswax, animal fats, vegetable oils, and bitumen along with numerous plant resins which were mixed and heated to form ointments. Their properties caused them to be particularly manageable to recover from pottery vessels, even after thousands of years.
A number of specialists stated that:
“The more fatty and sticky a residue is, the better results you get,”, and “We had good organic preservation, and we had residues that preserve well”. After being immersed in natron, corpses were treated with sticky mixtures to seal the skin, blocking decay and decomposition by bacteria. “The materials we found have an antibacterial function,”.
“It’s the most complicated part of the process, where the chemistry really starts.” Some ointments may have been smeared directly on the corpses; others were probably applied to the linen bandages, which may have been dipped directly into wide-mouthed “goldfish bowl” vessels.
“Some of the materials may have been used not because they were more effective, but because they were exotic ‘Look at the size of my world, that I can get something from so far away,’” which means that some of the materials were imported from parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Some of these exotic materials included dammar and elemi, plus myrrh resins extracted from hardwoods native to Southeast Asian rainforests thousands of kilometers from ancient Egypt. Cedar and pistachio were sourced from the mountains of Lebanon and from around the Mediterranean plus pitched from the Dead Sea.
The ancient Egyptians spend over 2000 years perfecting the process of mummification which would only further prove their deep knowledge of chemistry and biology.
Egypt Tours Portal
Egypt Tours Portal was established in 1987 and we have more than 33 years of experience in the field of tourism in Egypt. We have defined the word of professionalism throughout the tours that we have arranged through the past years as it is not just business to us but it is a matter of proving to the whole world that we are the best travel agency in the middle east who can arrange perfect well-organized tours in Egypt with the whole required element to make it one of its kind.
The Egyptian archaeological mission in Saqqara uncovered the site's first and largest hideout dating back...
On June 16, 2022, the Egyptian Supreme Committee for Epidemiology and Health Pandemic Crisis Management a...
Saqqara Monuments Area is a blessed attraction filled with many mythical tales and archaeological artifac...
Eoffers valuable insights straight from the source, capturing the voices and experiences of those who matter most – our cherished clients
© Copyright Egypt Tours Portal 2025.
