How did we first discover ancient egyptian mummies?
Mummies have always been known. The medieval doctors of Alexandria in Egypt prescribed powdered mummy as a kind of wonder drug, and mummies were dug up and made into medicine until the 18th century! The earliest public unwrapping of a mummy was conducted in Cairo in 1698. Through experimentation, the Egyptians discovered that decomposition worked largely from the inside out. Bacteria collected first in the body’s internal organs and moved on from there. To stop the putrefaction process, the embalmers realized, they would have to remove the internal organs. This, combined with the discovery of the natural drying agent natron, led to the famous Egyptian mummies we know today. The science and theology of embalming continued to evolve over the years, so there is no single Egyptian ritual. But the standard practices of the New Kingdom’s 18th through 20th dynasties (1570 to 1075 B.C.), an era that produced some of the best preserved mummies, are fairly representative. The embalmers left the
