Ancient papyrus holds the world’s oldest guide to mummification

The oldest known instructions for the ancient art of embalming mummies were recently discovered on a medical papyrus from ancient Egypt. How-to descriptions of the mummification process are exceptionally rare in the archaeological record — only two other such “manuals” are known.

This newest example, found in an ancient scroll dating to around 1450 B.C., predates other mummification texts by more than 1,000 years. The guide contains many helpful suggestions, such as how to make herbal insect repellent and using red linen wrappings to reduce facial swelling.

Sofie Schiødt, a research assistant in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, discovered the embalming manual while translating a papyrus for her doctoral thesis, which will be published in 2022, university representatives said in a statement.

Half of the papyrus scroll is in the university’s Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, and the other half is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Prior to that, each piece was privately owned, and they were acquired by the university and the Louvre in 2015 and 2006, respectively, Schiødt told Live Science in an email. It wasn’t until 2018 that experts learned that the two pieces were part of the same scroll.

In its entirety, the papyrus measures nearly 20 feet (6 meters) long and is inscribed on both sides. It is the second-longest medical papyrus from ancient Egypt, and Schiødt’s translation project relies mostly on high-resolution photographs of the precious artefact.

“This way we can move displaced fragments around digitally, as well as enhance colours to better read passages where the ink is not so well-preserved,” Schiødt said. “It also aids in reading difficult signs when you can zoom in on the high-res photos.”

Succinct recipes

There are five sections in the medical papyrus. The first is short medical recipes, followed by a section on herbs. Next is a long section on skin diseases, followed by the embalming manual, “and finally another section of succinct medical recipes,” Schiødt said. 

Only a small portion of the papyrus — just three columns of text — covers embalming. Though the mummification section is brief, it’s packed with details, many of which were absent from later embalming texts. 

“Several recipes are included in the manual describing the manufacturing of various aromatic unguents,” Schiødt told Live Science, referring to substances used as ointments.

However, some parts of the embalming process, such as drying the corpse with natron — a desiccating compound made of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate (salt and baking soda) — aren’t described at length. 

“As such, the text reads mostly as a memory aid, helping the embalmer remember the most intricate parts of the embalming process,” she said.

According to the manual, embalming a person took 70 days, and the task was performed in a special workshop near the person’s grave. The two main stages — drying and wrapping — each lasted 35 days. 

Schiødt said that one of the exciting new pieces of information from the text involves a procedure for embalming a dead person’s face.

The instructions include a recipe that combines plant-based aromatics and binders, cooking them into a liquid “with which the embalmers coat a piece of red linen,” she said. 

“The red linen is then applied to the dead person’s face in order to encase it in a protective cocoon of fragrant and anti-bacterial matter,” and this was repeated every four days, according to the study. On days when the embalmers were not actively treating the body, they covered it with straw infused with aromatic oils “in order to keep insects and scavengers away,” according to Schiødt.

Work on the mummy typically wrapped up by day 68, “after which the final days were spent on ritual activities allowing the deceased to live on in the afterlife,” Schiødt wrote.

Huge cemetery with at least 250 rock-cut tombs discovered in Egypt

About 250 tombs, some with fancy layouts and hieroglyphics, have been discovered cut into a hill at Al-Hamidiyah cemetery to the east of Sohag, in Egypt’s the Eastern Desert, about 240 miles (386 kilometres) southeast of Cairo, Egypt’s antiquities ministry said.

The tombs were constructed at different times in Egypt’s history, the archaeologists said in a statement from the ministry.

The earliest were constructed about 4,200 years ago, at a time when Egypt’s “Old Kingdom,” as modern-day Egyptologists call it, was collapsing.

At this time, the pharaohs of Egypt were losing control of the country, as a number of local governors gained power. Why these tombs were cut into the hill is not clear but it was not an uncommon practice in ancient Egypt. 

The tombs in the cemetery that date to the end of the Old Kingdom tended to have a more elaborate architecture that included an entrance corridor leading down to a gallery with a burial room located in the southeast part of the structure.

The archaeologists also found pieces of limestone with hieroglyphic inscriptions in some of these tombs; they also discovered what may be the remains of plates that were placed as funerary offerings to tomb owners, the ministry said in the statement. 

In one tomb that dated to the end of the Old Kingdom, archaeologists found paintings that depict the tomb owner slaughtering animal sacrifices, and people making offerings for the deceased, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in the statement. 

The latest of the tombs found in the cemetery date to almost 2,100 years ago, the end of what modern-day scholars call the “Ptolemaic Period.”

At this time, pharaohs descended from Ptolemy I, who was one of Alexander the Great’s generals, ruled Egypt.

Roman power in the region was growing around 2,100 years ago, and in 30 B.C., after Cleopatra VII died by suicide, Egypt became a Roman province.

The team discovered numerous artefacts inside the tombs, including cups, jars and plates — some of which were full-sized examples that may have been used in daily life, and others that were miniature vessels possibly used as symbolic offerings for the deceased, the ministry said in the statement.

The tombs also contained painted spherical vessels that could have been used to store liquids. What was left of a round metal mirror was found in one tomb, and many of the tombs held both animal and human remains.

Research at the site is ongoing and more tombs may be found in the future, Waziri said.