National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead Page #2

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"Take this side off right here."

Researchers can coax clues

about daily life 3,000 years ago

from the tiniest samples

of tissue and bone.

Egyptologist Bob Brier,

of Long Island University,

knows more than most about mummies.

But just how a mummy became a mummy

was a question that irked him for years.

"The party line

among Egyptologists was always,

'Oh we know how they did it,

they removed the brain through the nose,

they removed the internal organs.

We know pretty much how they did it.'

But there's no papyrus

that tells how to mummify a human.

The Egyptians never wrote down

how they did it.

It was a secret,

probably a trade secret."

A brief description was recorded by

Greek historian Herodotus around 450 BC.

For Brier,

it was not the final word.

I started to do

a mental mummification,

trying to just imagine exactly

what happened.

At some point I realized,

the only way we'll ever really

find out is to do it."

In 1994, Brier set about to perform

the first Egyptian-

style mummification

in two thousand years.

In Cairo, he tracked down

the embalming spices

mentioned by Herodotus,

including frankincense and myrrh.

He would also need special equipment.

"We had to have replica tools

made of all the instruments

we thought the embalmers used.

So for example,

we had to have obsidian,

an obsidian blade flaked by somebody

in the Southwest

who knew how to do this.

We had to have a silversmith

make bronze tools

just like ancient Egyptian

bronze tools."

"Not since the time of Sneferu

has its like been done.

Now I'm a little bigger than

the average Egyptian..."

Copying ancient designs,

Brier built an embalming board

for the elevation of the corpse

and drainage of fluids.

"And I'll tell you,

it might be good for the dead,

but it's not good for the living."

With his colleague Ronald Wade, at the

University of Maryland Medical School,

Brier would mummify a man

who had donated his remains to science.

"There were quite a few surprises

along the way

as we did the mummification.

One was in removing the brain.

Everybody always thought that

you kind of pull the brain out

a piece at a time through the nose,

at least that's how

all the articles say it was done.

We tried it,

it didn't come out that way."

"What we figured out,

what the Ancient Egyptians did was

they inserted a long hook

and then moved it around,

using it like a whisk.

And then broke down the brain until-

it was almost like

a, a milk shake consistency,

and then turned the cadaver

upside down, and then the brain ran out.

That's how they did it."

Internal organs were removed through an

incision made with an obsidian blade -

sharp as any modern scalpel.

Then the body was covered with

several hundred of pounds of natron -

a naturally occurring salt,

Brier had imported from Egypt.

Internal organs

were treated separately.

Left in place for about a month,

the natron was supposed to leach

all moisture from the body.

For Brier,

the suspense was overwhelming.

"What would we get?

Would it look like a mummy?

Or would it need another 3,000 years

before it looked like the things

in the museums?"

"One of the things

that was really almost shocking

was when we took the natron off,

we had a mummy."

A striking demonstration

that people are mostly water,

the body would shrink from more than

"What are the oils in it, Bob?"

"The oils are frankincense, myrrh oil,

palm oil, lotus oil, and cedar oil.

There are five that I got."

Brier anointed the body with oils

considered sacred by the Egyptians,

then began wrapping.

"Nice and tight."

Accurate to the last detail,

he used more than a hundred yards

of pure linen

inscribed with Egyptian spells.

Internal organs were placed

in replica funerary jars,

created by local college students.

"It's been perfumed

and now it's going to be wrapped

and we place it inside the jar."

"A lot of people don't realize

that we did the project

not to get the mummy,

but to get knowledge.

And the project isn't over.

Our mummy, it seems,

is what we say, dead and well.

He's been at room temperature

now for about two years,

no signs of decay, it's stable.

So we think we did it right.

But he's still being used

in research projects around the world.

We get requests for tissue samples,

from people doing studies

on ancient Egyptian mummies.

This is the only mummy in the world

for which we know exactly

what was done to him.

It's the only, so to speak,

ancient Egyptian mummy that

we have a full medical record on.

So it's an important mummy."

If only in the annals of science,

Brier's mummy has achieved immortality-

a fate the Egyptians

would surely have approved.

The quest for eternal life

still goes on today-

just in a different form.

Cryonics involves freezing the body

in liquid nitrogen

immediately after death.

Practitioners have faith

that scientists of the future

will have the know-how to revive them.

The sad truth is the human body-

about two thirds water,

plus a few basic chemicals-

is simply not built to last.

Exposed in warm weather,

a corpse could be reduced to

a skeleton in a matter of weeks.

Underground, or underwater, the

process usually takes somewhat longer.

Bone may last from months

to millennia.

But when conditions are just right,

Nature makes mummies.

In northwest China, near the route

of the fabled Silk Road,

the searing sands have yielded

more than a hundred heat-

dried mummies.

Surprisingly, they have

the features of Caucasians,

and date back

two to four thousand years.

Many must have lived

in the region centuries

before the opening of

the Silk Road around 200 BC.

Scholars had long been puzzled

by ancient Chinese texts

describing figures of great height,

with red or yellow hair.

Cave paintings in the region lent

credence to the accounts,

but the discovery of the mummies adds

an important piece to the puzzle.

Their existence suggests

foreign traders settled in China

much earlier than previously believed.

The bogs of northern Europe

have long inspired legends-

among them the "boogie-man."

Two thousand years ago,

the Celts and their kin believed bogs

were an entrance to

the realm of the gods.

They tossed in tribute

of silver and gold-

and other strange sacrifices.

Bogs are filled with

a natural "embalming fluid",

acidic water low in oxygen

and rich with tannins,

the same chemicals

used to cure leather.

Over time, this brew converts

dead vegetation into peat,

long harvested as a heating fuel.

It also works wonders on bodies.

More than a thousand "bog mummies"

have come to light;

most are some 2,000 years old.

Often, their bones are dissolved,

while their skin is transformed

into a supple leather that retains

a breathtaking impression of life.

Many bog mummies bear signs

of a violent death-

slit throat, strangulation,

or hanging.

Many scholars believe they were

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