The Myths vs Reality of Mummification

0:00Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far we've covered the English Reformations, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com slash subscribe or sign up in your podcast player. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup.

0:44Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready to cook pizza, no antibiotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected whatever happens.

1:25Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years so its customers can keep theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

2:01Egyptian mummies. We're obsessed with them. Of course we are. And we have been for thousands of years. And that's what we're talking about on today's episode. But we're going to start by taking you back to the early 1820s, when an audience of Londoners stood agog as the explorer Giovanni Belzoni, a man had recently returned from Egypt with a trove of ancient treasures, peeled back a pile of dusty bandages to reveal the sunken, desiccated, parched face of a corpse. this was one of the first unrolling parties yes they were a thing a macabre sensation that became the rage in Victorian Britain as people would gather to unwrap mummies and have a party these mummies had been purchased or stolen during trips to Egypt they've been brought back to the UK and the wealthy elites of Europe became obsessed with them and through them the mysteries of the ancient Egyptians and the process of mummification.

3:02What did it all mean? There are stories of Victorians snorting cocaine off mummies, ingesting ground up mummies, hoping that would be some kind of medical elixir called mummia. But our long relationship with mummies, as you can tell, it's been complicated. It's been riddled with misunderstandings. And so we've often been muddled and wrong. So here we are. I'm going to set the record straight. I'm joined by the expert, the great friend of history here, a best-selling author, and curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, European Museum of the Year, Dr. Campbell Price, he's back on the podcast, to sort out fact from fiction when it comes to the myths of mummification in ancient Egypt.

3:47Campbell, you're at the coalface. You're where the rubber meets the road. People come to you, they want to know more about Egypt. Presumably mummies loom very large in that conversation. Yes, in a popular museum like Manchester Museum, European Museum of the Year, it is very common that people associate museums either with dinosaurs or, you're right, with Egyptian mummies. So there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of misconceptions about the ancient Egyptian dead. So is one of them that mummies are somehow, you're just trying to preserve these bodies forever in a sort of macabre way? Yes, because when mummies first encountered the West and when the West first encountered mummified bodies from Egypt, 1700s, at that time there were experiments in Europe about embalming procedures with the explicit intention of people die away from home.

4:40They need to preserve the body to bring it back. So lots of experiments in anatomy theatres to understand the human body and to experiment in mummification, embalming techniques were back projected onto the ancient Egyptians. So one day you might have a fresh-ish cadaver and then the next day you might have a mummified ancient Egyptian and you were assuming that the people who were embalming both were doing the same thing. Interesting, just as you said that, my mind drifted off, speaking of the 1700s, early 1800s, to Nelson and his huge big cask of brandy They saved his body after the Battle of Trafalgar They didn't throw him overboard to bring him back and bury him in St Paul's Gliedro, as they should have done Anyway, so that's some form of That's very Dan Snow take on farming So, okay, so we'll discuss it, but it's not actually, they're not trying to just keep these people, keep this flesh from melting No, I think this is a modern assumption that the reason you would treat the body is to keep it like, you know, you see grandma in the funeral home.

5:42This may not be the case. Interesting, we'll come to that. Second thing I think we, people like me, think about is that there's mummies, there's an element of the undead. They rise, they run around, they scare people. There's a horror element. Is that something the Egyptians would have recognised? Yeah, I think exactly as you described, there's a threat. And we'll maybe unpack that a little bit. This would have been totally alien to an ancient Egyptian. The mummified dead were meant to be effective and beneficial for you, a living person. And they would be your kind of foot in with the gods. If you did the mummification rituals correctly, the funeral, and you observed an ancestral cult for a dead relative, then they would do things for you.

6:28So it was not about threat or fear, but occasionally there were misunderstandings between the living and the dead. How interesting is that? It's the opposite. It's good. You want to be surrounded by mummies. Yeah, well, essentially, yeah. Okay, let's go back all the way. So take me back into the deep past. When do we start seeing these burial practices emerge? If you go all the way back to the old kingdom, even older, how do people bury their dead or dispose of the dead? So we've got the 3 ,000-year sweep of ancient Egypt, which is roughly 3 ,000 BCE up to Cleopatra. Yeah, just folks, every time we talk to you, Cleopatra lives closer to the iPhone than to the?

7:03pyramids. Unbelievable. This is because ancient Egypt is a long, long, long, long time and things were very regional. This is important. They did different things in different parts of the country and also it lasts a long time and fashions change. So when you talk about ancient Egypt, there's a tendency to imagine this big monolithic, all ancient Egyptians believe X. This is simply not true. So in answer to your question, mummification is such a quintessentially ancient Egyptian thing. The Greeks, the Romans are obsessed. You could say morbidly obsessed with what the ancient Egyptians do to their dead.

7:40So it's not just us, everyone that's come. So even the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans, everyone's been fascinated by this technique. Yeah, because obviously if you're a Greek or someone living in the Greek world like Herodotus, you are visiting Egypt and people are still practicing, actively practicing mummification. And you think, gosh, it's weird. It's one of the weird things the Egyptians do. So there's this kind of slightly schizophrenic approach to the Egyptians. They have this very long past and they're very clever and they're great healers and they're great magicians, but also they're very superstitious and they do weird stuff and they're kind of to be feared in a way.

8:18Really? Yeah. Okay, so take me back way before us, way before us. That's the end of ancient Egyptian history, right back at the beginning. People being buried. Before there are pharaohs. Before their pharaohs. So obviously people are being buried and they are being treated in a special way. I think that's what we can say from the archaeology. We've got what we would call, Egyptologists would call pre-dynastic graves. So pre, before the dynastic period, before 3000 BCE. And there are people buried in a crouched kind of fetal position, a sleeping position. and we know from later pyramid texts from hundreds of years later that there's a concept that you you sleep to wake you die to live so sleep is a metaphor for death from which you are going to wake up into a new life not not in the sense the body is going to get up and move around but you're going to live in a metaphysical existence in the beyond and in order to do that you need stuff So people are buried with cosmetic items, which seems to be because the body is treated in a certain way that makes it look more divine.

9:30And that is the fundamental point to understand about mummification. It is not about preserving the person as they were, as they looked when they were alive, but to change them and to change their appearance so they appear as a god. because that's the only way you're going to survive this terrible rupture of death. Are they becoming divine in some way? Yes, absolutely. So it's not just in Rome, emperors became divine, but this is a chance for all Egyptians who can afford it are somehow becoming divine beings in death. Yes, and I think I'm often asked that, what did most people expect? So we know about kings and queens and the elite.

10:10I suspect most ancient Egyptians would believe that the act of burying someone and treating the body and doing the proper funeral, regardless of where in the social pyramid you are, the action, the ritual did the transformation. So that answers the question, you know, why is everyone not mummified? The full works is only performed, the wrapping and the oils and the resins and the coffins and the tombs yeah that's only the top five percent but everyone else believes there's the possibility to exist as some superhuman being after death otherwise it would be quite a sad life well yeah tell me about it so you these early tombs they're these early graves buried with cosmetics sounds like my daughter's bedroom i push open her door through a sea of skincare and cosmetics yep and then what's the next development after that So there's definitely the wrapping of the body from very early on.

11:12But we're not talking, you know, the Hollywood bandages wrapped around the corpse. It's a shroud. Shrouding, not necessarily of linen, but of matting. And this is a way of marking the body as separate. So the deceased is existing already separate from society. not because I think the ancient Egyptians are afraid of the dead or uh you know repelled by decomposition there may be an element of that but there's a way of marking uh the dead as entering this other world the after world in which gods exist so there does seem to be a concept of gods and the dead exist in this other place and they are in communication with one another so you want to use your own deceased relatives as a means of communication so they can intercede with the gods they can they can they can work on your behalf they can lobby they can lobby that's a great uh that's a great word to use if you have a known you know if you had a great aunt who was particularly you know socially powerful which i do i had one certainly um you would think after she passed on she would be your kind of conduit so why worship a kind of impersonal great god like the god osiris or the god amun um who haven't appeared on the scene yet in the pre-dynastic period i should say why do that when you could actually have a relationship with your deceased great aunt who could as you said lobby the other divine beings and who could do things of benefit to you so the dead are you're laying them at rest hoping to ease their journey into this afterlife but i've been once they're there they're going to help you as well so there it's a reciprocity to this yes reciprocity is important and you want to keep the channels of communication open so we've got archaeological evidence of the the grave so the development after burying someone in a in a pet basically with some covering some items around them a kind of shallow grave then there is the development of that quintessentially Egyptian thing, the two-part, the bipartite tomb.

13:30So you have the sealed bit, which is meant to be secure from animals and from tomb robbers, potentially, and then the open bit, which is inviting people in to leave offerings, to speak to the dead, to communicate with the dead, because A, the dead don't want to be forgotten, and the living want that means of communication with the other world, with the divine world. And if you have a particularly illustrious ancestor, perhaps. The one who got the great aunt who really was something. This might continue for generations. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Beyond living memory. Yeah, interesting. And if you imagine the cemetery, because the cemetery would be at or removed from the settlement, you could see, you can just see, my gosh, that grave over there has 10 times as many, you know, pots of figs as that one next to it.

14:16That person must have been particularly venerated and particularly effective as an ancestor. And I suppose if your family continue to enjoy wealth and fortune and are able to afford lots of jars of figs, that does suggest that they're doing their job. So it's a self-fulfilling… Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, self-fulfilling and it's a social contract. It is a reciprocity. It's a kind of, yeah, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours from beyond the grave. Let's get to, what's the next step on this journey towards mummification? So tombs become more developed. And the standard explanation, Dan, which I might put a pen in and try and challenge, is that the fact that tombs develop and then coffins develop means that the hot, dry sand is no longer in contact with the body.

15:12Okay. And so if you leave a body in a hot desert, it will naturally desiccate. So natural mummification occurs. And so for Egyptology, there is an assumption that when tombs develop, then artificial mummification has to take place. But I'm rather sceptical about this neat division, this neat development. Always be healthily sceptical of neat historical explanations. Tell me about it. I think there is more artificial treatment of the body while the body is still in contact with hot sand, and there are other religious reasons for doing what the Egyptians do. So the next stage in the early dynastic period...

15:56So we're into the old kingdom now. Yeah, we're into... They're building pyramids. They're almost building pyramids. They're building big tombs called mastabas. Yes, the mastabas tombs. And then, you know, there is a chamber. There's a room you can go into in which the body is placed in a coffin. And so the body at this point is still potentially placed in a wooden coffin, which we have an example in Manchester Museum. I think we've looked at it together in the storeroom, which is short, made of wood. And it's big enough for an adult to be still in this crouched position. So there's the idea of the sleeping to wake, the dying to live.

16:38But then it's not this Hollywood idea of the fully stretched body wrapped, but it's crouched still. And the shape of the coffin is often characterized as a house. It's not a house. It's a shrine of a god or a palace of a king. Now, a king is divine. So a king lives in a sort of a shrine. God's statues live in shrines. they are periodically brought out for rituals and so the body of the deceased for those that can afford it is treated in a way like a divine statue so the dead have their divine status assured by being put in a shrine shaped box and will that box be brought out? no okay because that's the Inca with separate well part of this one but the Inca would bring them out wouldn't they?

17:31and there are other cultures which are either keeping the dead within visible distance, or, as you say, periodically will bring the dead out to participate in life. So that's not coming out? No, these are sealed and closed, and this is the secure part of the tomb. But then there's a tomb chapel developing all this time into the Pyramid Age, which starts out as a little room for the pots of figs, develops into a room with a central doorway, a false door which enables the interaction of the living and the dead but maintains the security of the tomb beyond so that tomb robbers can't get it more from dr campbell price after this don't go away this episode is brought to you by tiktok i never thought about the history of coffee Yeah, make it.

18:29Yeah, drink it. Nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com slash discovermore.

19:26chicken wings and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions.

20:09It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years so its customers can keep theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants and everyone in between.

20:52We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the award-winning network, History Hit.

21:24Oh, so now are we approaching mummification here? If by mummification you mean what we classically think of as the dehydration of the body. I've just got halfway through this podcast and realised a very embarrassing thing. I'm not really sure what mummification is. Okay. I'm sorry, Campbell. No, no, no, no. So what do we mean by mummification? So mummification really is the artificial treatment of the body. Okay. So that is the application of, or the drying of the body through a chemical means, a kind of chloride compound sodium chloride like Egyptologists call it natron you've heard of natron I guess I have not but it sounds cool well it's called natron because it's a salt like substance that is extracted from different places but principally from a place called the Wadi Natrun so there's a homophony here where we're extracting this and this is and i really emphasize this point this is something that priests use to bathe so it's like having a salt scrub yeah which makes you feel pure and allows you to go into the temple and do all your rituals in a state of purity you can even chew balls of natron apparently this is what the greeks and the romans think is very weird but this is applied to the body as a way of purifying it it has as a perhaps as a side effect a dehydrating i see so that's good so it's doing it there's a ritual effect and then there's a physiological effect yeah sucking the moisture sucking the moisture out so that makes it nice and dry yes and then you come along and you want the body to be divine more divine so you apply resin plant resin which is burnt uh in temple rituals as incense.

23:28So there is definitely a value placed on smelling nice. So frankincense, myrrh, the reason these are, you know, in biblical, people will know those terms from biblical accounts. The reason they are so valuable is because they are used in the treatment of the dead and treatment of ritual procedure. So the ancient Egyptians are applying resin, but I really emphasize not to preserve the body but to make the deceased more like a god. And then the last stage is to wrap the body in linen. Fine, radiant, white linen. That's how gods appear. Okay. They appear in this kind of amorphous shape. What Egyptology calls mummiform shape.

24:14Mummiform. But actually, Egyptology has got the associations the wrong way around. Yes, the gods aren't looking like mummies. the mummy's looking like god exactly dad you've got it in one oh that's it so i think when you understand those procedures mummification is simply not that simply it's quite a complicated process is the treatment of the human body and other bodies animal bodies as well to make them or to emphasize or enhance their god-like qualities and so these little statues of the gods that you're talking about that would be brought out on special they would actually look quite similar.

24:54So the mummies would look like them as well. Yes, so that kind of visual comparison was very important to make that association clear. And so this is, although you're saying 3 ,000 years of ancient history is a long, long time mummification actually is a common thread through it, would you say? I mean, does this endure? Yes, it's culturally absolutely central. The dead are far more part of society than maybe in modern west um but in terms of you know if you asked when do you attend an egyptian funeral and see something that looks like a mummified body from a hollywood film well the body starts to be stretched out okay in the in the pyramid age okay so old kingdom old kingdom yeah um you know 2500 ish BCE.

25:47And what happens is there's an interesting period of development around the time of the pyramids, Dynasty 4, Dynasty 5, where the deceased is almost completely covered in plaster. And so there are interesting cultural parallels with places like Jericho in the Levant. Those are much older cases where skulls, you know, disarticulated skulls are treated with plaster. So there is this idea that, again, gods are permanent. Divine images last forever. And it's something I've looked at in my own research. It's clearly something the ancient Egyptians observed. They were maybe less concerned about observing and monitoring the naturally preserved bodies of people in the desert than they were making the simple observation that a statue or an inorganic form of a god lasted way longer than a biological person because art lasts longer than normal human life.

26:53Tell me about it. Tell me about it. That's all we can leave behind, Campbell, at the end of the day. But with that being the belief, you then want to become an artwork. You want to become permanent. How interesting. So you apply the plaster, not as a way of, and this is important, not as a way of capturing the person's appearance when they were alive, but making them into this kind of generic image of a god. And then you dress them with linen. And so people are, we've got archival photos from, you know, tombs that were found at Giza and they look quite unnerving. People kind of stiff. So the corpse is just a useful chassis for creating a godlike image.

27:37Yeah. Yeah. So yes, it's not about the cherishing grandpa's memory and trying to preserve his essence. It's about, oh, brilliant, we got a corpse. We can turn grandpa into a god. Yes, and you want grandpa to lobby on your behalf of the gods. And interestingly, of course, I'm not discounting personal emotion and grief and regret at death. Of course, that's part of the human condition. but beyond that there is a sense much later in egyptian history that it doesn't really matter what grandpa's personality was he is joining one of the gods and the gods are generically perfect so you want him to be one of those kind of yeah generic lacking in personality permanent beings rather than oh grandpa really liked you know his his um he was a lovely guy his beer in a certain way.

28:32Maybe you still remember that, but you're not memorialising quite the way we think of being important now. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So as the ancient Romans, ancient Greeks discover Egyptian culture, interact with it, they're still mummifying right the way through to the period of Cleopatra, the period of people who are familiar with what we might call the classical age. But I've seen in your museum and elsewhere, these wonderful paintings. Some of the best human likenesses I've ever seen from the ancient world are painted on coffins. Now, is that a separate fashion? It's related.

29:06It's a related fashion. So yeah, that's the period after Cleopatra, because as we all know, when Cleopatra pops her clogs, in comes Rome. Octavian becomes Augustus, and that starts Roman occupation of several centuries in Egypt and in lots of the rest of the world. But there is still the practice of mummification for the elite, for people who can afford it. You can definitely still be mummified. There's a lot of bad press in Egyptology around those mummified bodies. Late mummification. They're late. It's rubbish. They've declined. They don't know what they're doing. They can't preserve anymore.

29:45So they slosh on big buckets of black goo. and then they stick on a fine portrait those images you're talking about are those and yeah and we've looked together at them they're so striking they look so lifelike they look like someone you might see in the street um those are mainly second century ce um so a couple of centuries after cleopatra but their function is the same and i think it is our sentimental wishful thinking that makes them into portraits. I don't think they're meant to be godlike. They're meant to be godlike. Oh my goodness. And there are cues. That's why they're all so handsome.

30:22Yes, and beautiful. Okay. And there are cues that we can observe that we shouldn't miss in those images. So gold is quite liberally applied in the framing of the fine portraits. The style of the hair for the men follows that of the Roman emperor. and the women the Roman empress. So if you understand, as you said before, Dan, the Roman emperor is a god. And certainly in Egypt is worshipped as a god. He's on the temple walls. Who are you going to want to look like to ensure, to maximise your chances of going into the afterlife as a god? Well, the Roman emperor, because he is the pharaoh as he is the emperor, as he is a god.

31:06So it's not that, and I really want to emphasise this because it's something people ask me a lot in Manchester Museum. Oh gosh, she looks like she maybe is in the grips of a final illness. No, no, that woman probably had that portrait painted, created, portrait, created after death. It's AI slop, guys. It's AI slop. An Egyptian version of, yes. It's very beautiful. Some of the finest art I've ever seen from that period. But that's not what they look like. They're breaking my heart here. I'm sorry, but the point is good. And it's, again, worth really holding on to this idea. They look good because they were meant to be seen.

31:47So unlike the Pyramid Age until Cleopatra, pretty much, when the ancient Egyptian dead, however they're decorated, however beautiful, however stunning, however good they look in a museum now, they were never meant to be seen after the funeral. After Cleopatra, in the Roman period, those volume portraits, we have good archaeological evidence, were set up in chapels where they were visited for generations. They weren't buried. They weren't sequestered out of sight. They were meant to be engaged with. Because remember, you need your ancestors to put in a good word for you with the gods. So there's a change in practice that might reflect Roman ideas of what it's appropriate to do after death.

32:29So mummification, you know, the funeral in Roman Egypt is not the end. You're visiting the dead and then maybe after grandpa has been dead for 100 years and he's no longer in living memory, then you gather him and his fellow mummified dead up and bury them. More from Dr. Campbell Price after this. Don't go away.

32:58Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Barry Chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza, no antibiotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market. Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households.

33:39Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years so its customers can keep theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

34:27Mummification comes to an end, Christianity? Christianity is a bit of a party pooper generally. So what, sort of three, four, five hundred? Yeah, three hundred, end of the three hundred is when Christianity really takes off. there is still the the treatment of the body and there is still respect of the body but there is less evidence for the the complete wrapping of the body the body might be dressed in you know sunday best and the body may inadvertently be preserved due to dehydration in a hot dry country but there is not that artificiality in the service of turning the deceased into a god that was pharaonic practice.

35:14So that's the end of thousands of years of mummification practices. Then let's take a break and leap forward to the rediscovery, the European mind being opened up to these mummies. Yeah. 1700s, 1800s. And why do people go so, why does it send people into such a complete frenzy? I mean, I think knowledge of the mummified ancient Egyptian dead is it lurks in the Western consciousness, you know, well, since biblical accounts are known. It's in Herodotus. For as long as people have known about Herodotus, they've known about mummification. Anyone who's read the Bible knows about, you know, the treatment of Jacob and these kind of Egyptian ways of doing things.

36:04In terms of explorers and archaeologists finding the dead, there's an account of an Italian explorer, traveler called Pietro della Valle, who in the 1600s is going to Egypt. And he must be in the area of Saqqara, so that area of the cemetery near Cairo. Huge cemetery. Huge. Was huger then. It's been pretty comprehensively emptied since. But he finds Fayum Portres. and he describes, he's got a beautiful description of the richly stitched, he's very impressed by the wrapping. So it's not just gold, it's the wrapping styles, it's these painted faces. And he brings these bodies back to Europe. So there's an idea of the ancient Egyptians doing this based on actual evidence of the mummified bodies from the 1600s.

36:57But there's not always respect for these bodies. They are ground up. They are turned into paper. They are ground up for medicine. Mummy is mumia. Yeah, where do we get the word? So the term mumia is this Persian Arabic word for the black substance which occurs naturally in the area of modern Iran, but which did actually, tests have shown, form part of the black goo that was applied to the mummified dead as a means of turning them into gods. So sometimes you'll see the god Osiris has this jet black skin, a sign of his power and his rejuvenation. And so all the mummified dead want to look like Osiris.

37:43So this becomes very fashionable. I mean, Shakespeare writes about it, I think. Desdemona in Othello has this on her handkerchief and it's meant to be a cure-all, particularly good for syphilis suffice it to say consuming mummified flesh is not good for sexually transmitted diseases in fact that's one that you can that's one that you put a pin in that fact it's important but that's what people were consuming as medicine yeah ground up for paper ground up for paint mummy brown paint some of the great pre-raffin light canvases the brown is mummified flesh so there is a macabreness obviously i'm getting to that point where where we've traveled quite a long way from that ancient egyptian idea of the radiant dead being effective for you in the afterlife who are gonna you know promote your interests with the gods who are permanent and enduring and yeah divine that has changed and then fear creeps in i think you could say it's interesting in fiction in in gothic horror the fear of the mummified dead in the late 19th century does seem to go hand in hand with um european and particularly british colonial ambitions in egypt so 1882 invasion bombardment of alexandria there is a sense i think it's undeniable in the literature that there is a fear that the Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians, are going to bump back for the colonial exploitation of the country and the control of...

39:32It almost comes from a Victorian guilt somehow. Oh, absolutely. Colonial guilt. And so it's interesting, the mummified dead in the earlier 1800s are often characterised as quite beautiful women, just reanimated. But then by the late 1800s they're shuffling dirty evil threatening and of course it's in the terminology you talk about if you say to a child what is a bandage a bandage is you graze your knee and you put a plaster on it and it gets dirty so the idea that a mummified body is bandaged it's shuffling and it's trying to kind of consume you and it's uncleanness. So that's the fear, which I'm sure is related to colonial guilt.

40:28And then they had plenty to be guilty about because the Victorians are removing lots of objects from Egypt. And then there's the mummy unwrappings. I mean, dinner parties. I mean, where does this come into it? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think those unwrappings are happening even in the late 1700s. So as soon as, I mean, I think you've got to give credit to the people at the time. If you're a learned gentleman in the 1790s and you're maybe interested in anatomy, you're interested in the business, the chemistry of embalming, you've heard all these things about the ancient Egyptians. You know the stories about Mamiya.

41:09So Mamiya is this cure-all. and there is some concept in which the mumia substance is thought to promote preservation of the body. So you think if you've got an ailment or a sickness, then if a whole bucket load of the mumia can preserve a human body, if you take a little bit of it, it'll sort your gammy leg. So by extension, the people who are doing the experiments in the late 1700s, early 1800s, want to get to the root of this. So they are curious, they are open-minded, but when they start unwrapping the bodies pretty ruthlessly to get to the good stuff inside, well, they characterize what they find in racial terms, they're very dismissive actually about the ancient Egyptians, and they don't record what they do, most of them, terribly well.

42:07So all of that evidence has been lost so that's incorrect whereas now we walk around going ancient egyptians unbelievable how do they do that extraordinary they were rather dismissive they thought these are primitive savages some of them well there was a debate raging about them being primitive savages some of them uh were judged to be honorary moderns so they must be you know caucasian europeans supposedly because they there's lots of skull measuring going on yeah Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, which is a pseudoscience. But people at the time, throughout the 1800s, into the 20th century, believed it was a viable means of scientific research.

42:47But there's something presumably, but the people wanted to be present when these mummies were unwrapped. There's an excitement there as well. Yeah, I mean, it was a kind of an after-dinner entertainment where you would, well, the well-to-do who could actually get hold of a mummified body. Or dinner. Well, indeed. Preferably the body would be in a lovely, painted, decorated coffin, which if you remember before 1822, no one can read hieroglyphs. Champollion hasn't done the deed with decipherment. So no one knows what the hieroglyphs say. So you assume, you know, this is going to be the biography of a beautiful, intriguing woman.

43:28Which, by the way, we've talked about this before. I wish they were biographies. I mean, I know that they're, because hieroglyphs tend to be religious ritual texts. Yeah, quite standard. And if they were Roman, it would just, the whole thing would be like, then they did this, then they did that, and these were the dates, and this is who the consul was, which I think would be quite useful. Yes, you do not get that, I'm afraid. All of that writing, not once they go, he fought in a battle and this was the result. It makes me a bit sad. No. And culturally, that is just not the kind of thing. I know, it's funny.

44:03You want to become a god. You don't want to commemorate what... But actually, that totally reinforces what you just said, because it's not about grandpa and his achievements and his life. No, his illustrious life. No, we can try to get someone into the gods here. Let's go. This is about the divinity of it. If you're lucky in some elite tombs in Egypt, you might get a boast about a soldier saying, I followed the king in these places. So you get some geographical information and you maybe cut off some hands or were rewarded with some hands and some servants. But generally, no, hieroglyphs are not giving you that information.

44:43So at the mummy unwrapping parties... You're left to imagine. Well, you would be helped to imagine by the performer that'd be very kind of early, although the words didn't exist, early Egyptologists. Early podcaster. Yes. Would be filling in the gaps of what we don't know with a lot of entertaining information. Yeah. Imagine that. Imagine that, Campbell. Yeah. Previous iteration. Okay. So, and then, so they're unwrapped and they're all having, it's crazy. It's sort of, it must have been an overwhelming experience. The candles, you're drinking, there's mummies being unwrapped. The smell. The smells.

45:21And I know still in the rooms we use for storing mummified remains, there is a smell. So if you were doing it live in a warm candlelit environment, it would be quite pungent. And occasionally the accounts say, you know, the last wrappings came off and the person turned to look at us and the smell was overwhelming. So it was quite a sensory experience. In some cases, they would give out little bits of the cloth as a souvenir. Up until, well, 1908 in Manchester, we had a lady called Margaret Murray, very interesting, early Egyptologist, suffragist, folklorist, practicing witch who lived to be 100.

46:07She gave out sections of the scientifically unwrapped mummified body she'd just unwrapped. So the fashion of people wanting to be part of it, wanting to be part of a scientific endeavour. But when you read those accounts, and this features in fiction as well, gothic fiction at the time as well, they're described as experiments. So unwrapping is an experiment. It's like exploration. We're doing science here, lads. We're doing science. It's all good. We're doing science. Can't launch. Yeah. So we can totally atomise this poor individual. Have you ever unwrapped a mummy? Do we unwrap or do we X? No, no, no.

46:48Do we put them in the CAT scan today? Yeah, CT scanning is the way to date. So you can tell a lot, but I should emphasise CT scanning has its limitations because obviously CT scanners are for living bodies, which are 70 % water. A mummified body is very dry. So flesh, dried flesh looks like bone. Okay. And I've been in the hospitals where we've done the CT scan and the radiologist and the archaeologist and the bio-Egyptologist cannot agree what the scan shows. Is it paleopathology? Is it something the person had as a condition that may have hastened their demise? Or is it an artifact of mummification?

47:32It's a part of the treatment of the body. So you cannot say in 99 % of cases, unless someone has an axe through their head, You cannot say how someone died, really what conditions they had. It's very subjective business interpreting CT scans of mummified bodies. Let's finish up with the question of how we treat mummies now. One of my earliest memories is seeing mummies in museums like yours. It's just a profound experience. My daughter is going this weekend to sleep with the mummies in a museum, the sleeping night in the museum. Sleepover, yeah. How do you in the museum world balance the sort of taste, decency, ethics?

48:11These are human remains, they're revered, and yet they are an astonishing portal through which most people might discover Egyptology, which is a wonderful thing. Are we allowed to be excited by them? It's a balance, isn't it? And I think there has been a shift from the times we've just talked about when you're revealing you're actually unwrapping the dead with, I mean, today if you go to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo, there are quite strict protocols for not taking photos and trying to be respectful around the mummified bodies of kings and queens. So I know, I mean, at Manchester Museum, we're trying to balance up the knowledge and the emotional connection with the dead, with respecting the wishes of Egyptian people today, with our visitors.

49:03And so I think I was the same. It was a mummified body, a wrapped mummified body in Glasgow when I grew up visiting the museum in Kelvin Grove that really spoke to me and connected with a cartoon I watched as a kid. I think we've talked about this. Thundercats. Yeah. Thundercats, really seminal moment. My childhood was watching Thundercats. And it's funny. I think it's especially true with the mummified dead as we've just said you don't go into a museum even as a child with a blank slate on your mind you don't go in with a neutral oh ready to be impressed you go in with a lot of cultural baggage things you're already interested in images you've seen ideas you've already and opinions and prejudices you've already formed and you look for confirmation of your belief in museums.

50:03And the great thing about museums is they can push back on some of those preconceptions. So I think especially for the mummified dead, museums I think are good places to have debates about whether we should or shouldn't see those people and how we should care for those people in the future. Well, I'm glad you, Dr Campbell Price, the man in those conversations and helping to shape how we resolve these issues. You're such a legend. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Well, thank you very much to Dr. Campbell Price. Make sure you go to Manchester Museum. It's one of the best.

50:39You can spend many happy hours looking at their collections on rejectology. Also, make sure you smash all the various buttons. You know you've got to press them so you don't miss another episode of this. See you next time for another episode of Dan Snow's History Head.

50:56Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years so its customers can keep theirs.

51:38Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

52:15And there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe.

52:45Thank you.

53:17Thank you.