mummy sings the blues

Jen-Luc Piquant has been on a bit of a mummy craze this past week, ferreting out such online gems as a downloadable Mummy Maze Game; an archived Cyber Mummy; and National Geographic's highly informative How To Make A Mummy. She was inspired after catching a cable rerun of the 1999 blockbuster, The Mummy, which contains a scene where Evelyn (Rachel Weiz) explains to Brendon Fraser's Rick O'Connell exactly how Egyptian mummies are created: something about shoving hot pointy hooks up your nostrils and scrambling your brains around a bit before yanking them out through your nasal passage. Not to mention removing all the vital organs and storing them in decorative canopic jars. Evelyn's assurance that one would be dead when they performed these acts does little to assuage the otherwise alpha-male Rick's distaste for mummification -- a distaste no doubt shared by arch-villain Imhotep's priests, who were all mummified alive as punishment for abetting their master's treachery.

It's a pretty accurate description of the process, actually -- perhaps a bit surprising considering the substantial liberties the film (and its sequel) otherwise took with Egyptian history. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The brain was indeed scrambled with hooks to liquefy the gray matter, then yanked out through the nostrils; the Egyptians didn't consider the brain to be an important asset for the afterlife (!), unlike the rest of the vital organs, which were carefully removed and stored in the aforementioned jars. The head was stuffed with sawdust and various resins, and the body was "embalmed"  by covering the corpse in natron, an inorganic salt common to the region. This dried out the body and prevented decomposition. The corpse was then wrapped in strips of white linen, then in a sheet of canvas before being buried in an entombed coffin, surrounded by various sacred charms and amulets.

There are certain rare cases of natural mummification, too, when the environmental conditions are just right -- extreme cold, for instance. Otzi the Iceman was found frozen in a glacier in the Otztal Alps in 1991, dating back to 3300 BC. Desiccating dryness helped preserve a group of Incan mummies found in Peru. Perhaps the most astonishing example of natural mummification, though, is the so-called Bog People; these "bog bodies" have been found in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. They are the remains of bodies deposited in sphagnum (peat) bogs, in which the acidity of the water, cold temperature, and lack of oxygen served to essentially tan the body's skin and soft tissue. The skeletons may have disintegrated over the centuries, but the skin and internal organs are so well-preserved, researchers have been able to determine their stomach contents. The details thus preserved can be astonishing. One can see fine facial features, even some stubble, in Tollund Man (shown), who was found with the rope apparently used to hang him. Most of the Bog People appear to have died violently, but it's unclear whether they were part of a ritual sacrifice, or executed for unknown crimes.

Jen-Luc is in good company when it comes to a fascination with mummies. We loves our thousand-year-old dessicated corpses, whether as a reminder of our own mortality, or as hope that some part of us will remain after death, who can say? In the 19th century, mummy heads were sold as souvenirs and proudly displayed in the home. Aristocrats liked to entertain guests by unwrapping purchased mummies for informal observation sessions (causing them to rapidly disintegrate because of the sudden exposure to air).

The corpses were ground up into powder and sold as medicines to stop bleeding, and the wrappings were sometimes used to steep tea. (I'll say it for you: Ewww!) That rascally scamp Mark Twain is credited with spreading an urban myth that mummies were being used as fuel for locomotives. And in the 1830s, a man named Jeremy Bentham died and left a will instructing that his remains (minus his skull) be mummified and displayed, fully dressed in his usual clothing, "seated in a Chair usually occupied by me... when engaged in thought." (How he could be engaged in thought without his skull isn't addressed, but heck, apparently we don't need our brains in the afterlife.)

Even though mummies have been around awhile, there's still a lot to learn about them. In 2001, a couple of organic chemists at the University of Bristol in England --Richard Evershed and Stephen Buckley -- took a closer look at the techniques and materials the Egyptians used in their mummification processes, using a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The advantage of their approach is they could work with minuscule samples, minimizing damage to the mummies. They studied 13 mummies ranging across a 2300-year period, from around 1985 BC to AC 395. There's a great online article from National Geographic about their work, but here's the gist:

Sure, you can gut a corpse and douse it with salt until it's dessicated to the nth degree, but that in itself won't 100% ensure proper preservation. The tomb might be humid (yeah, it's in the desert, but still...), causing the body to rehydrate, and let's face it, that kind of moist environment is a veritable playground for decay-inducing microbes. Evershed and Buckley maintain that the Egyptians were extremely knowledgeable about the innate anti-microbial properties of the materials they used in their embalming recipes. In addition to the gutting and stuffing of sawdust and natron into various body cavities, the linen wrappings used to encase the corpse were treated with resins from fir and pine trees, beeswax, myrrh, palm wine, cassia, camphor oil, and other naturally microbe-resistant ingredients. They also might have helped cover up the noxious odors associated with decaying flesh (there's a reason the embalming tents were located far from the city centers).

Today, mummies are sometimes used to calibrate CAT scan machines at radiation levels too high to be safely endured by a living human. It's fitting, since X-rays and CAT scans are the primary means of imaging mummies for further study. (Brief reminder for non-scientists: a CAT scan is just like a standard x-ray, except it uses an x-ray generating device that moves around the entire body to generate cross-sectioned images that are fed into a computer to produce a full 3D image.)

CAT scan images reveal far more detail of things like internal organs than conventional x-ray machines: a CT scan found an arrowhead in the frigid body of poor Otzi the Iceman that archaeologists believe was the cause of death. Famed Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses I had his 3D image taken with a CAT scan. And just this past March, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History collaborated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to scan the mummy of a small child (currently on display at the museum). Child mummies are rare, and this one is smaller than normal, with an oversized head and a slight curvature of the spine. The researchers hope to determine what disorder the child may have suffered from in life to cause those features.

In the case of Tutankhamen -- affectionately known as King Tut, a boy-king who ascended the throne at the ripe old age of 8 -- a series of CT scans taken in 2005 told researchers quite a bit about this relatively minor Egyptian Pharaoh, who died around age 19. The 15-minute scan produced a whopping 1700 images. He was pretty healthy for the most part, although he had a slightly cleft palate and an impacted wisdom tooth. (No word on what Egyptian dentistry prescribed for such things.)

The biggest headlines, of course, had to do with how Tut died. Earlier x-rays seemed to indicate the presence of bone fragments, suggestive of a blow to the head, leading to speculation that Tut had been murdered (a common fate of many Pharaohs). There also was a dense spot at the lower back of the skull, which researchers interpreted as evidence of a subdural hematoma, also consistent with a blow to the head. The 2005 CT scans put the speculation to rest, finding no evidence of foul play. Rather, it seems King Tut died of a broken leg that turned gangrenous, killing the Boy-King within days, possibly even hours. The current prevailing theory is that he fell from his horse -- not nearly as scandalous as being murdered by your trusted priest, who's been having it off with your mistress.

Even more important (to some) than determining Tut's cause of death was solving the Mystery of the Missing Male Member. The team swore they also managed to locate the boy-king's missing penis -- assiduously cataloged in the 1920s along with the rest of his parts, but not seen since. They believe it's mixed in with the sand next to the body, along with lots of other tiny skeletal fragments. (Like thumbs. One hopes, for Tut's sake, that the Royal Equipage would not easily be mistaken for a thumb. Dead at 19 from a broken leg, and under-endowed besides, seems an especially tough cross to bear.)

The 2005 scans marked the first time Tut and been out of his tomb since it was first excavated 82 years ago by an archaeological team led by Howard Carter. I'm old enough (ahem) to remember the big national tour of Tut and his treasures. Along with about 8 million other people, I have some vague memory of viewing the exhibit, highlighted by the famed gold and blue mask, which was apparently pried off the mummy's face with very hot, sharp knives, causing a great deal of damage.

In fact, because the resins used in the mummification process affixed the wrapped corpse to his coffin, Carter's team pretty much dismembered the body to get it out. Really. They chopped off the arms and legs, removed the head, and cut the torso in half, all to recover the gold objects and precious jewels buried with the corpse. Grave robbers or serious scholars? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Also in 2005, three separate teams of scientists (Egyptian, French and American) teamed up to reconstruct a facial likeness for King Tut, working from those sale 1700 3D CT scan images of the Pharaoh's skull. The resulting silicone bust was featured on the cover of Time, but even that proved controversial: some complained about the choice of a medium skin tone. The researchers claimed that because of the wide range of skin tones among the North African population, we may never know for sure Tut's exact skin tone. Or his eye color. They went with their best approximation.

All in all, poor Tut has good reason to be depressed about his afterlife, which might be why the illustrious Chicago songwriter, Michael Smith (not to be confused with the Christian pop musician of the same moniker), penned a catchy little tune dedicated to the Boy-King, "Dead Egyptian Blues" (excerpted below). You should all go out and buy this man's CDs for a taste of American songwriting at its best. I mean, who else could find such a fitting rhyme for "esophagus"?

Oh Mister Tut what good's it do
They love your chair but nobody cares for you
Egyptian nights were never colder
And all your friends are thousands of years older
Whatever happened to that gang down by the Sphinx
Seems they're only forty winks away
Those girls from Cairo with their belly button jewels
Made you play the fool yesterday yesterday
Now you keep in shape with Elmer's glue
Man you're all wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues

Oh Mister Tut they love the mask
But do they love you honey sweetheart don't ask
Where's those baby browns and that pearly smile
That smile that drove 'em wild by the early Nile
You make one terrific hieroglyphic don't you bro'
Centuries of standing sideways turned you to a pro
Those girls from Cairo who filled your heart with lust
They've all turned to dust yesterday yesterday
And those bandages don't do that much for you
Man you're all wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues

Oh Mister Tut they dig the tomb
All that gold leaf brightens up a room
But what's the diff when you're stiff what riff they're playing
When your ears have spent five thousand years decaying
What does it matter what possessions you may boast
When you're just a ghost it's only jive clive
Your sarcophagus is glowing but your esophagus is showing
Who cares how rich you are love
When you look like Boris Karloff
And they even named this dog food after you
Man you're all wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues.

 

Comments

[Brett]

Jeremy Bentham is actually better known as the philosopher who founded utilitarianism. His will ( http://skeptically.org/utilitarianismtheethicaltheoryforalltimes/id9.html ) doesn't seem to mention anything about removing the skull; Wikipedia says that his head was damaged in the embalming process and so was replaced by a wax replica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham

Nice pic here: http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=1185

[Dave Godfrey]

The story when I was at University College London was that the main reason for removing the head was to stop students from King's College (set up as an Anglican rival to UCL's non-conformist origins). The story has it that they suceeded but left the head on the bus.

[jongleur]

Stuck inside, immobile, with the Memphis blues again.

As R Zimmerframe once almost had it.