Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Did you ever want to know how mummies
Speaker 1: work and how you mummify a person? Well you can
Speaker 1: learn if you listen to this one from March fifteenth. Hey,
Speaker 1: look at that date, March fifteenth, twenty eleven. How mummies work.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Speaker 3: Charles W Chuck Bryant. We're about to do this stuff
Speaker 3: you should know. Thang, Yeah, do you like that? I did?
Speaker 3: How you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: Great? Now that I've switched out my foul smelling microphone cover?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is actually take two, but it things nasty.
Speaker 3: I'm not getting near it, but can you trually imagine Chuck? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and something's future facted on the mic cover, the Peak
Speaker 3: Clipper cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, weird. You know, in real studios it changes out
Speaker 1: of it now and.
Speaker 3: Then these things have been running for at least a year.
Speaker 1: Fifty cents? All right, what's your chuck your sterling intro?
Speaker 3: Speaking of fifty cents, do you remember when we were
Speaker 3: talking about fossils.
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we said that every once in a while,
Speaker 3: something happens so that a fossil naturally occurs, and that
Speaker 3: it's desiccated, the skin is dried out. Yeah, that's a mummy.
Speaker 3: Yeah who knew? I knew? Yeah, me too. Actually, when
Speaker 3: we talked about that, I was like, we have to
Speaker 3: do how mummies work, and here we are.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised, just when it's slipped under the
Speaker 1: radar for so long. This yeah right up our alley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went and looked. I'm like, surely we do
Speaker 3: have it and be fast.
Speaker 1: It was gruesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's like stuff you should know died in
Speaker 3: the wool. Yeah. Yeah, and you're about to hear why
Speaker 3: dear listeners, because we're about to talk about all the
Speaker 3: things that happened to a corpse after death, which we've
Speaker 3: done before, but we need to go over again. Mummies
Speaker 3: are cool, though, they are very cool. So, Chuck, let's
Speaker 3: say that that you were stabbed in the stomach enough
Speaker 3: time so that you could not move any longer. You
Speaker 3: couldn't walk back home. It was out in the woods,
Speaker 3: and the one person you're with, the very person who
Speaker 3: stabbed you, left you there to die. You bleed out,
Speaker 3: you're dead. Things start happening to your body, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: pretty quickly, up first is autolysis.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is uh, that's kind of gruesome. That's when
Speaker 1: your organs that have digestive enzymes actually say, well, this
Speaker 1: is what we do, so we're going to start digesting
Speaker 1: the organs.
Speaker 3: Right and not like my stomach is eating itself because
Speaker 3: I'm hungry, Like my stomach is actually eating itself. It's
Speaker 3: rupturing and oozing and it's it's being reduced to nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: while that's going on, and that actually I think if
Speaker 3: I remember correctly, that kind of helps kickstart the process
Speaker 3: of putrefaction, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, autolysis starts within a few hours after you're dead.
Speaker 1: The body, the body knows.
Speaker 3: And if you want like a really big overview of
Speaker 3: this or an in depth look at what happens to
Speaker 3: the body immediately after death, you should listen to our
Speaker 3: Rigor Mortis podcast if you haven't already. Yeah, body farms.
Speaker 3: I talked about it in there too.
Speaker 1: So yes, puture faction, you're right, is followed by or
Speaker 1: follows autolysis. And that is when bacteria does its little
Speaker 1: job and produces everything to a skeleton. And you know,
Speaker 1: depending where you are, this gonna happen in a few.
Speaker 3: Months, right, depending on where you are now, We as
Speaker 3: human beings are a subtropical species, right, Chuck, you know that, sure,
Speaker 3: So we are designed, if you believe in that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, to decomposed. Decompose most readily in a warm,
Speaker 3: humid climate. That's where the bacteria that breaks down our
Speaker 3: tissue lives or thrives moisture warmth. If you have cold, dry, yeah,
Speaker 3: things change a little bit. Like a refrigerator exactly. Which
Speaker 3: is a good place to store a body if you
Speaker 3: want to preserve it, or food if you want to
Speaker 3: eat it. That's a good point to your body if
Speaker 3: you want to eat it. For an in depth look
Speaker 3: at that, you might want to listen to our cannibalism
Speaker 3: podcast though. That's right, right, But let's say you don't
Speaker 3: have a refrigerator. Nature provides it for you on some occasions.
Speaker 3: There's ut See the ice man.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, see the ice man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the iceman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nineteen ninety one and the Italian Alps. This dude
Speaker 1: is very well preserved natural mummy.
Speaker 3: He's amazing.
Speaker 1: Died and basically got buried in ice and kind of
Speaker 1: stayed that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think they have the impression that he fell
Speaker 3: into a crevasse. Yeah, died, but it was during like
Speaker 3: a blizzard maybe, and he was covered with snow and
Speaker 3: ice that stuck around for millennia. But he's so well preserved.
Speaker 3: You can see the tattoos on his skin and still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well and we knew, Hey, they tattooed people fifty
Speaker 1: three hundred years ago exactly. Little window into what life
Speaker 1: was like for Iceman.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was. He had I think a nice little
Speaker 3: set of air and his bow and copper age European guy.
Speaker 1: That's why he had a wallet sized photo of you
Speaker 1: as well of me. Yeah, it's not possible. He was
Speaker 1: from the future. That's my that's what I think.
Speaker 3: He just blew my mind. Chuck good. So ice, as
Speaker 3: we talked about in Fossils too, was a is a
Speaker 3: very good preservant. But nothing does it. Oh, Pete Bogs too.
Speaker 3: You remember I finally showed you that picture of Tolan Man.
Speaker 1: Can't forget about Pete.
Speaker 3: Again if you have not gone and looked up Tolon Man.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, Like his whiskers are still there and he
Speaker 3: lived a couple thousand years ago, right.
Speaker 1: What's his name? Did they name him just Tolan Man?
Speaker 3: Toland Man? I would have named him Pete Terrible. So
Speaker 3: those two are pretty good. But the money, the natural
Speaker 3: money preserve it is sand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 3: The reason why sand is such a great preservative is
Speaker 3: because it actually wicks away and absorbs and just removes
Speaker 3: the any type of humidity in the body, which allows
Speaker 3: the body to desiccate, which means that there is no
Speaker 3: place for bacteria to live, which means the tissues, the
Speaker 3: tissue remains intact. And that's all about mummy is Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a it's a corpse with its tissue intact.
Speaker 1: Well, and this kind of kickstarted the whole mummification artificial
Speaker 1: mummification craze in Egypt because at first they buried bodies.
Speaker 1: They weren't in caskets, they were you know, buried in
Speaker 1: the hot sand. Yeah, and that preserved the body for
Speaker 1: so long. They said, well, hey, if the body's preserved,
Speaker 1: and that means the spirit's preserved. And this all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we have new views on the afterlife and life.
Speaker 3: Right, So what they decided to do and this was
Speaker 3: so what I guess what you've just said though, is
Speaker 3: that the mummification, the whole concept of mummies that we
Speaker 3: have that was so ingrained in the Egyptian culture. Happened
Speaker 3: by accident, right, Yeah, So they started they figured this out.
Speaker 3: So they start purposefully burying people in the sand with
Speaker 3: the intent of them being mummified. Right. But the problem is,
Speaker 3: somewhere along the way they begin to have horrible thoughts
Speaker 3: of their dead relatives choked with sand. Right, So they
Speaker 3: started to say, maybe we should put some sort of
Speaker 3: barrier up in between the corpse and the sand. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that led to caskets, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, started with just like a wicker covering, and then
Speaker 1: that eventually led to wooden boxes. But here's the rub. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now the body is not preserved. Now the body rots desicates. Well,
Speaker 1: no it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't, it's just a normal corpse. Now, yeah, becomes you've
Speaker 3: put a barrier between the body and the preservant in
Speaker 3: the form of a tomb.
Speaker 1: So what's an Egyptian to do?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: Well, the Egyptians, being the very pious culture that they were,
Speaker 3: and the very intuitive and smart culture that they were.
Speaker 3: You should for that, you should go read did the
Speaker 3: Greeks get all their ideas from the Africans? Good article?
Speaker 1: Did you read them?
Speaker 3: Yeah? We do that. Podcast man let's do that, Okay.
Speaker 3: They they decided that they needed to rectify their their
Speaker 3: religious beliefs with their problem, their their need to preserve bodies.
Speaker 3: And what did they do.
Speaker 1: Well, they said, maybe we can replicate this natural process
Speaker 1: that we've discovered through man made artificial means and the
Speaker 1: trial and error. Yeah, it's kind of like it's called embalming, Josh.
Speaker 3: And they actually figured out, Chuck that like, one of
Speaker 3: the one of the problems with the desiccation, the natural
Speaker 3: desiccation in the desert was that the skin turned like
Speaker 3: this crisp brown right, like you know, over baked chicken.
Speaker 1: It's exactly what looks like.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, And with these embalming techniques that they eventually mastered,
Speaker 3: they they could they could preserve a body better than
Speaker 3: it could be preserved naturally, which is man conquering nature.
Speaker 1: It's right, conquering death even well, come on, it's a cluss.
Speaker 1: They didn't have huge success at first. They would embalm
Speaker 1: the bodies mainly to keep it away from the elements,
Speaker 1: wrap it in linen, soaked in resin, and they would
Speaker 1: create nice little shapely forms that look kind of like people.
Speaker 1: But that didn't really do a whole lot because the
Speaker 1: bandages didn't really halt the composition. They basically figured out
Speaker 1: that it happens from the inside out.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It took it took them a few centuries, if not millennia.
Speaker 1: Basically wrapping it up, and it's just disintegrating within the
Speaker 1: bandages at first.
Speaker 3: Right, But those bandages are important because they stick around
Speaker 3: pretty much the whole time. Same with the resin right. Yes,
Speaker 3: so those two very early embalming techniques are mummification techniques
Speaker 3: stuck around, But it was a big leap when they
Speaker 3: figured out, oh wait a minute, this is going on
Speaker 3: inside and so we need to start addressing.
Speaker 1: That by removing organs.
Speaker 3: Right, And it's about here I think that we hit
Speaker 3: the Middle Kingdom. And like the mummies that we think
Speaker 3: of were produced in the from the eighth keent the
Speaker 3: twentieth dynasties of the Middle Kingdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was when the like the heyday of mummification, right.
Speaker 3: Right, which was between fifteen seventy and ten seventy five BC. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the mummies that we think of, the ones that are
Speaker 3: still around like really well preserved today, they were preserved
Speaker 3: during this time, right, right, So what do you do
Speaker 3: when you realize that everything bad is happening to a
Speaker 3: corpse from the inside out. How do you address that?
Speaker 1: Should we just walk through the process one by one,
Speaker 1: the gruesome process? Yeah, okay. First thing you do is
Speaker 1: you take it and it varies, you know, the different processes.
Speaker 1: And within the processes, they had things that they would say,
Speaker 1: sort like religious rights that they would go through as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very sacred processes.
Speaker 1: But they would take the body generally to the Red
Speaker 1: Land desert region. It's not near a whole lot of people,
Speaker 1: so people aren't grossed out, but it is near the
Speaker 1: Nile River. They needed the Nile River to well, we'll
Speaker 1: see that in sess second step one, step one. You
Speaker 1: need the Nile for step one. They think they did
Speaker 1: it an open tents obviously to get some good ventilation going.
Speaker 1: And the first place they took the body was to
Speaker 1: the eyebo, the place of purification.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was basically the Nile or the place where
Speaker 3: they the place near the Nile where they rinsed the
Speaker 3: body with you washed the body off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a rebirth symbol of rebirth.
Speaker 3: Right, So the the the corpse was hastened or some
Speaker 3: of the spirit was hastened in the afterlife, and we
Speaker 3: should probably say here so it doesn't get too confusing.
Speaker 3: There were three spirits that the Egyptians believed comprised a person, right,
Speaker 3: the Ka, the Ba, and the ah.
Speaker 1: Ah Yeah akh, Yeah, it's always tricky to pronounce that.
Speaker 3: Right, So I think with this purification process, the ka
Speaker 3: or the or the Ba or the ah, we're moved
Speaker 3: along to the to the next world. Yeah, but the
Speaker 3: Ka that was the one that was inextricably linked with
Speaker 3: the corpse, which became the whole reason for mummification. As
Speaker 3: long as the corpse was preserved, the ca was preserved
Speaker 3: and the afterlife could you know, the person could live
Speaker 3: in the afterlife. But once the corpse died, the kaw
Speaker 3: died and that second death was final, which is why
Speaker 3: they wanted to preserve bodies in the first place. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's pretty cool. It's like the opposite of ashes to
Speaker 3: ashes and dust to death, that's right.
Speaker 1: So after they've washed the body and sort of reborne
Speaker 1: it in the rivers of the Nile, they carried the
Speaker 1: body to the per Niffer and that is the house
Speaker 1: of mummification. And this is kind of where this is
Speaker 1: the basement of the Fisher House. Basically, huh and six
Speaker 1: feet under the fissures. Oh, yeah, this is in the basement.
Speaker 1: This is where we go and the gang would get
Speaker 1: to work. Yeah, they would lay it on a wooden table.
Speaker 1: The body. They removed the brain by hammering a chisel
Speaker 1: through the bone in the nose.
Speaker 3: You know, I knew that already before this articles Christian
Speaker 3: Slaters and like he's in like one of the creep
Speaker 3: shows or Amaze Amazing stories or tales from the crypto
Speaker 3: movie pump up the volume. It might have been that,
Speaker 3: but I think it was like a smaller vignette, like
Speaker 3: a mini movie within the larger movie. It's called like
Speaker 3: lat number nine or whatever and leaving the cube, think
Speaker 3: it was. Now that's called Brotherhood of the Tiger. Now
Speaker 3: I think they change. Yeah. Anyway, they there's a mummy
Speaker 3: who's hell bent on taking other people's brains using these
Speaker 3: hooks or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's exactly what they do. They make a
Speaker 1: nose hole basically larger than the nostrils. They insert a
Speaker 1: big hook, iron hook, and start scooping it out. Eventually
Speaker 1: they go down to a spoon and eventually they just
Speaker 1: rinse out the remaining bits of brain. And what's funny
Speaker 1: is so hold on. They discard the brain because they thought,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we have this stuff in our heads,
Speaker 1: but we probably don't need it in the.
Speaker 3: Afterlife, right, which is kind of unusual for the Egyptians
Speaker 3: because they they preserved organ yeah, you know, but the brain.
Speaker 3: And what's funny though, like I think what we've just
Speaker 3: kind of meander passed that we should kind of meditate
Speaker 3: on for a second, Chuck, is that they get to
Speaker 3: a point where they fill the head with water. I imagine,
Speaker 3: close the nose in the mouth and shake the head
Speaker 3: around to slosh all this stuff out, and then lean
Speaker 3: the head over and let all the last bits come out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I would do it.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they did shots of that stuff, it
Speaker 3: was like part of the ceremony.
Speaker 1: I would draw the line there. Well, they probably just thought,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they didn't even know what the brain was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. It's just waste.
Speaker 1: So the brain's out, Josh. Then they take a blade
Speaker 1: made from obsidian sacred stone, cut a little incision on
Speaker 1: the left side and reach in and start pulling out
Speaker 1: the organs that they can get to right, and then
Speaker 1: preserving those, like you said, except for the kidneys because
Speaker 1: they didn't think they were important.
Speaker 3: Either, which they were, you know, I mean the kidneys
Speaker 3: are important, but it's not like brain important.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you need kidneys to live. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they preserve the appending you need all of Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was probably the most holy right of the organs.
Speaker 3: So they actually when they preserve these things, they would
Speaker 3: they would wrap them in uh in resin strips of linen, right,
Speaker 3: Basically they would mummify each organ, yeah, and then they
Speaker 3: put them in and canopic jars. Basically it was like
Speaker 3: here's your body, and then also here are your organs.
Speaker 3: I forget you.
Speaker 1: They'd leave the heart though, because they thought the heart
Speaker 1: was you know, linked to the soul and the spirit.
Speaker 1: And they're kind of on the money there, I think.
Speaker 3: So these organs take up space in our chests and
Speaker 3: abdominal cavities, so they would actually stuff the body with
Speaker 3: like incense and other materials as well.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, well, first they'd rinse it. Once they I forgot,
Speaker 1: they'd take out the lungs to the abdomen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right right there.
Speaker 1: You can't get along the little side slit and then
Speaker 1: they would rinse the chest cavity with palm wine and
Speaker 1: then they would stuff it. They would actually basically yeah, straw,
Speaker 1: Well I didn't say what actually you just said other materials.
Speaker 1: I would use straw, maybe frankincense, a little murrhor yeah,
Speaker 1: just to complete the trilogy.
Speaker 2: Stuff you should know, stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, straw, frankinsense and yeah, straw.
Speaker 1: That that kept the body from like caving in on itself,
Speaker 1: basically maintaining a little bit of shape.
Speaker 3: And then is the key. This is the key to mummification.
Speaker 3: And as a matter of fact, I'm just gonna say
Speaker 3: it now. I found it on the internet. There is
Speaker 3: a step by step, very easy to follow recipe on
Speaker 3: I think Wiki how, which I don't normally go on,
Speaker 3: but it's the only place I could find a recipe
Speaker 3: for mummifying a chicken using the Egyptian method, and it
Speaker 3: calls for natron, right, Yeah, that's the key. Natron is
Speaker 3: this basically a compound that the Egyptians figured out they
Speaker 3: could gather and combine from the Nile, which is basically
Speaker 3: baking soda, sodium bicarbonate and salt table salt sodium chloride.
Speaker 3: You mix the two together and it becomes this perfect preservant.
Speaker 3: So they would put natron powder, which is like this
Speaker 3: just accelerated the technique of mummification, like by light years. Sure,
Speaker 3: and they would cover the body with this stuff and
Speaker 3: leave it and it would just completely dry the body out. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this took about forty days. They had to guard
Speaker 1: the body while this was going on, obviously, because they
Speaker 1: didn't want vultures digging through the natron for what lies beneath.
Speaker 1: After the forty days, they moved the body then to
Speaker 1: the wabet, which is a house of purification. Yank all
Speaker 1: that incense and the stuffing out, refill it with the
Speaker 1: natron resin, soaked linen and other materials again whatever these
Speaker 1: mysterious things are. Then they would sew all the incisions up,
Speaker 1: cover the skin with resin, and then say, hey, it's
Speaker 1: time to wrap this puppy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is where we get the idea for
Speaker 3: the mummy, our modern idea of a mummy always wearing
Speaker 3: link bandages.
Speaker 1: That are always coming off.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You can just see the eyes maybe like teeth
Speaker 3: or something. Yeah, So this is where we're at. They're
Speaker 3: at the bandaging procedure that thirty five or forty days,
Speaker 3: while the nature and powder was doing its work wicking
Speaker 3: away all of the basically acting as the desk KNT. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the family of the deceased was going around town going
Speaker 3: do you have any linens we can have forever? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Do you have some linens we can have?
Speaker 1: And could you like your linens to spend eternity in
Speaker 1: the eavans above.
Speaker 3: With our dad. They collected about four thousand square feet
Speaker 3: just top top of my head, that's about how much
Speaker 3: they gathered sure of linen and would bring it to
Speaker 3: the embalmers, and the embalmers would say, hey, we like
Speaker 3: this piece. That piece is horrible. Are you really going
Speaker 3: to bury your dad in this? And they would take
Speaker 3: the best stuff and they would cut it into or
Speaker 3: they would tear them into strips three to eight inches
Speaker 3: wide of bandages and they would start the rapping, which
Speaker 3: would take a little while. Right, Yeah, it takes a week.
Speaker 1: Or two, I guess probably depending on how big the
Speaker 1: body is. Common sense. Start with the hands and feet.
Speaker 1: You wrap all. This is the initial under wrapping, I guess.
Speaker 1: You wrap everything individually, each little finger each it'll toe
Speaker 1: everything and then once everything's wrapped individually, they do a
Speaker 1: whole body wrap, applying new layers, coating the linen with
Speaker 1: again the hot resin to keep everything in place. Uttering spell.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would wrap amulets over different parts of the body.
Speaker 1: Wrap it up in there with you, protect you in
Speaker 1: the next world, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Right, and then presto chaninjoh, you are a mummy. And
Speaker 3: before we go further the process we've just described, this
Speaker 3: really ornate, wonderful, lengthy process.
Speaker 1: Where this is going.
Speaker 3: You would think about it like, there's so many There
Speaker 3: were a lot of Egyptians running around, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them died on any given day, and there was
Speaker 3: a lot of work to be done. So this process
Speaker 3: that we just described was for the people who had
Speaker 3: lots of money. For some reason, the wealthy have always
Speaker 3: been revered, right, and I've also gotten special treatment right. Right.
Speaker 3: If you were just an ordinary schmo like me or Chuck,
Speaker 3: you were going to get the budget package, which is
Speaker 3: basically like instead of like carefully removing all of the organs,
Speaker 3: preserving each one, they would inject oil like this oil
Speaker 3: mixture into your cavities, let it sit for a few days.
Speaker 1: It would stop up all your orifices first, sod leak out.
Speaker 3: Thank you. So I don't know how they did that.
Speaker 1: I guess with other materials.
Speaker 3: Right, So they would stop you up full of oil,
Speaker 3: let you sit for a few days, and then unstop
Speaker 3: your orifices and let all the oil drain out, and
Speaker 3: it would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it.
Speaker 3: It's a lot easier, a lot faster.
Speaker 1: So even this many thousands of years ago, you get
Speaker 1: what you paid for exactly. That's pretty sad. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: always been a budget package. Or maybe that's a good
Speaker 1: thing that it wasn't only just reserved. Like if you
Speaker 1: don't have any money, you just can't get mummified.
Speaker 3: That's a way to go.
Speaker 1: They thought, you know what, let's think of a cheaper
Speaker 1: way to do this for you folks.
Speaker 3: Right, let's just fill.
Speaker 1: You up with the oil, stop up your orifices, and
Speaker 1: give you a good shake.
Speaker 3: Yep, So you're prepared. You're all wrapped. However, they got
Speaker 3: your organs out there out, you're bandaged, and you are
Speaker 3: now about to be outfitted what's called a cartonage cage,
Speaker 3: which is kind of like a breastplate. Some cool like
Speaker 3: forearm armor, leg armor pretty much this thing that's going
Speaker 3: to hold your body together for a while. And a
Speaker 3: funerary mask, which is like the famous masks we think
Speaker 3: of when we think of like King Tut, like it's
Speaker 3: a death mask. And these were extremely important because they
Speaker 3: directed the spirit the ka to the right body afterward,
Speaker 3: So it was in a person's visage or possibly that
Speaker 3: of a god, but the spirit would be in on
Speaker 3: you know, what to look for.
Speaker 1: They would know that.
Speaker 3: That's how they knew it was. Who.
Speaker 1: Sure, this guy is supposed to supposed to either look
Speaker 1: like Josh or Anubis. Either way, I think that's him
Speaker 1: right overay there, right, so let's grab him.
Speaker 3: And speaking of a Nubis, you would be committed to
Speaker 3: your tomb following a funeral procession where you were carried
Speaker 3: in your suet, right, which so that's.
Speaker 1: What you think of with King Tutt. That's the casket
Speaker 1: that looks like a person, like the gold casket in
Speaker 1: the shape of a human.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a suet. It's a suet that would be
Speaker 3: carried to your tomb, and there would be a priest
Speaker 3: dressed as the jackal god Anubis. There were there was
Speaker 3: the ceremony of the mouth, which is pretty cool because
Speaker 3: there was some sort of weird understanding. I guess that
Speaker 3: you had died and now certain things had to be restored,
Speaker 3: and the ceremony of the mouth was this passing over
Speaker 3: of sacred objects to like the across the suet's face,
Speaker 3: the casket's face, and it would restore your five cents. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you need that exactly, so you're placed and this
Speaker 3: is weird. Chuck, did you find this odd that your
Speaker 3: casket was placed leaned up against the wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It almost like I would do that while I
Speaker 1: was getting everything ready and then I would lay it down.
Speaker 1: So it almost made me think that they kind of
Speaker 1: forgot and they say, oh, well, we left that first
Speaker 1: one leaning against the wall, so I guess that's the
Speaker 1: way we do it. Yeah, but that's not true. No,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they had a very good reason.
Speaker 3: Probably because it was easier to just walk up right
Speaker 3: out of there.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I would think they wanted to leave it upright,
Speaker 1: but standing it upright they didn't have, like the perfectly
Speaker 1: level floor probably wasn't too secure, so they just gave
Speaker 1: it a little lean.
Speaker 3: Sure, little help, which is far less secure than just
Speaker 3: laying it down on the floor. Yeah. Following that, you
Speaker 3: are your furniture. Don't forget your canopic jar of organs
Speaker 3: laid next to you, little food maybe, sure, your furniture
Speaker 3: basically the stuff you're going to need in the next
Speaker 3: life to be comfortable. Yeah, and you're set. Your tomb
Speaker 3: is sealed up, and it's probably inscribed with something along
Speaker 3: the lines of as for anybody who shall enter this
Speaker 3: tomb in his impurity, I shall wring his neck as
Speaker 3: a bird's. It was a standard mummy curse. Yeah, a
Speaker 3: mummy curse on the tomb.
Speaker 1: Yeah. People became in the nineteen twenties. Howard Carter dug
Speaker 1: up King Tut's tomb, and people were just crazy for
Speaker 1: mummies at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Westerners are like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: This curse thing is so neat. Laurel and Hardy are
Speaker 1: doing mummy curse movies and a microbiologist from Germany named
Speaker 1: Gothard Kramer or Cramer said, there may be something to
Speaker 1: this curse thing because they bury people with food produces
Speaker 1: mold spores, So when they unearth this tomb, all these
Speaker 1: mold spores are released into the air and it might
Speaker 1: kill you. So it's not that there's something to the curse,
Speaker 1: but it could lead people to tie the two together.
Speaker 1: If you unearth the tomb, then you die.
Speaker 3: Certainly, there's something weird about the Carter expedition who unearthed
Speaker 3: King Tut's tomb in nineteen twenty two because eleven of
Speaker 3: the people who were involved, not necessarily present, but involved,
Speaker 3: died within seven years. I think eleven people in a canary.
Speaker 3: His canary died like right when they entered the tomb.
Speaker 3: A cobra ate it. It's bad luck, it is, and
Speaker 3: then it just went downhill from there. So there's all
Speaker 3: sorts of explanations, but it's also oddly intriguing. And like
Speaker 3: you said, egypt Mania gripped the West. Oh yeah, they
Speaker 3: loved it all right. And there was actually unraveling parties
Speaker 3: where people get their hands on mummies and then like
Speaker 3: unbandage them, see what's in there, which is like, that's
Speaker 3: not what you do with a dead body. This desecration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's bad luck too, you know.
Speaker 1: So that pretty much is the Egyptian mummy, and that's
Speaker 1: what we mainly think of. But they weren't the first
Speaker 1: people to do this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: No, and then isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They the first the oldest mummies actually on the
Speaker 1: planet are from northern Chile, the Chinchoro people. Yep, Chinchiro,
Speaker 1: let's go with Chinchoro. Okay, Uh this they started doing
Speaker 1: this about two thousand years before the Egyptians, but they
Speaker 1: were not very much like uh, the Egyptians. They basically
Speaker 1: dismembered and disemboweled the body, put it back together again,
Speaker 1: sewed it up, and then covered it with black mud.
Speaker 3: Well they put it back together with like straw and sticks,
Speaker 3: and that's what they had. It was like they make
Speaker 3: qupie dolls out of like these bodies.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, covered it with black mud and shaped it
Speaker 1: into a human form. But they believe that this wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily done to preserve the body for the afterlife. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was more for the people left on the planet
Speaker 1: Earth to mourn the death of their loved one keep them.
Speaker 3: Around a little longer, which is very sweet.
Speaker 1: Because they saw evidence of like retouching of the paint,
Speaker 1: signs of wear and tear, so that you know, basically
Speaker 1: they were kept in the households for a little while.
Speaker 3: They think basically statues freaky freaky statues. Yeah, and that
Speaker 3: was five thousand BC, which is two thousand years before
Speaker 3: the Egyptians came onto the scene at all. It's right.
Speaker 3: And the would you say the Cinchoro people, Yeah, they were,
Speaker 3: which you said a lot.
Speaker 1: I think I went with Chinchoro, but someone will point
Speaker 1: that out if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: I agreed. They're not the only ones in South America
Speaker 3: who got into move cation either. The Incas very famously
Speaker 3: did as well. They had a little habit of sacrificing
Speaker 3: children to their gods, and they culture relativism chuck, and
Speaker 3: they would through this process like the child and the
Speaker 3: child's family were just treated like royalty for this, like
Speaker 3: it was a high honor to be chosen to be
Speaker 3: sacrificed to the gods. And they would get the child
Speaker 3: really wasted on this fermented corn concoction, take the child
Speaker 3: up to the cave. Sometimes I think they would whack
Speaker 3: the kid over the head, or other times they would
Speaker 3: get the child so wasted that they just would leave
Speaker 3: them there in the cold temperatures, exposed to the freezing temperatures,
Speaker 3: and the child would die of exposure. I can't say
Speaker 3: jerks about this, you can, but there's a very famous
Speaker 3: mummy called the Maiden, who's a fifteen year old girl
Speaker 3: and she was sacrificed as thanks to the gods for
Speaker 3: a really good corn harvest by the Incas in Peru
Speaker 3: five hundred years ago. Oh yeah, did you see that
Speaker 3: picture I sent you?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, was that her?
Speaker 3: It's like looking at a girl who's sleeping, but she's
Speaker 3: been dead for five hundred years. Yeah, like you if
Speaker 3: you've been to South America's I know you have her
Speaker 3: Central America. Like, she looks just like one of those
Speaker 3: girls you might see down there, like a Central American
Speaker 3: indigenous person.
Speaker 1: She's probably short.
Speaker 3: Then she looks kind of short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be funny if she was like six to two.
Speaker 3: But then moving on up, there's also one and it
Speaker 3: didn't make it into this article, but chuck, I've been
Speaker 3: there myself. Juannawanto, Mexico has a mummy museum and they
Speaker 3: have the world's smallest mummy. I think it might have
Speaker 3: been a fetus really, but they were all naturally mummified,
Speaker 3: to the great surprise of the nineteenth century townspeople who
Speaker 3: had to move a graveyard and found like, okay, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of mummies.
Speaker 1: How big was it?
Speaker 3: It was very small. You known object coffee up, coffee
Speaker 3: cup okay, sandered coffee cups on it, gotcha. But then
Speaker 3: there's like people, they're still wearing their suits, and it's
Speaker 3: really amazing. You walk into this little Mexican building and
Speaker 3: there's just dead people everywhere, just behind this glass. It's
Speaker 3: very neat. If you ever go to Guanawanto, Mexico, you
Speaker 3: have to go to the mummy museum.
Speaker 1: I think I should. Yeah, Lady Chang China. Chinese were
Speaker 1: they were lousy with mummies. Yeah, they love to mommify people.
Speaker 1: She was an aristocrat from about two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and she is believed to be about the best preserved
Speaker 1: ancient mummy so far. Did you see her picture? Yeah,
Speaker 1: with their tongue sticking out pretty well mummified, yeah, and
Speaker 1: her hair still. Yeah, she was. They haven't studied her
Speaker 1: a whole lot, the Chinese haven't, so they don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how she was prepared, but they do think that
Speaker 1: mercury and the embalming fluid might have had something.
Speaker 2: To do with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would imagine that will do it. Mercury, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: and also in China, mummies have kind of rewritten history
Speaker 3: a little bit. Some very very ancient mummies from one
Speaker 3: thousand BC. Before one thousand BC, they found some people
Speaker 3: of Indo Iranian descent. They're they linked them to like
Speaker 3: basically Mesopotamia through tattoos and like other implements that they had.
Speaker 1: In the shape of their face, the way they looked.
Speaker 3: Yep, and they figured out, like, wait a minute, these
Speaker 3: people were like Indo European traders.
Speaker 1: What are they doing here?
Speaker 3: And they just made their way to settle right in
Speaker 3: the deserts of China before the Han dynasty ever showed up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that kind of changed things a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm sure if we talk about mummies, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about the more modern day mummies because of the
Speaker 1: big interest in mummification thanks to Tut being found was
Speaker 1: the big one. Yeah, that's right around the time Lenin
Speaker 1: died Russia and they said, you know what, let's preserve
Speaker 1: linen and display in the Kremlin. So that's exactly what
Speaker 1: they did, and we do not know exactly how because
Speaker 1: it's an ancient Russian secret. I don't know about ancient,
Speaker 1: but it's a Russian secret, and they it's ongoing because
Speaker 1: they continue to immerse him in a preservative bath every
Speaker 1: now and then.
Speaker 3: Andy's wears a waterproof suit.
Speaker 1: That's right. And if you've ever seen pictures of Lenin
Speaker 1: or eva perone, did they look pretty lifelike? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: hers is way cool. They basically replaced all the fluids
Speaker 1: in her body with wax, right, which would be a
Speaker 1: very modern take on the ancient practice.
Speaker 3: There's also incorruptible corpses of the Catholic Faith. It's basically
Speaker 3: a person who is so pure on earth that their
Speaker 3: body just didn't didn't rot. And there's example of those.
Speaker 3: There's one he's like a prince, he's like a child prints.
Speaker 3: I think he died in like he died more than
Speaker 3: a thousand years ago, or about it a thousand years ago,
Speaker 3: and his body's totally preserved and there's no evidence that
Speaker 3: he was embalmed or anything like that. What they don't
Speaker 3: understand that there are some bodies out there that just
Speaker 3: defy logic. I wrote an article and you should read
Speaker 3: It's a miracle. How can a courpse be incorruptible?
Speaker 1: We need to keep in track of these awesome ideas. Correct,
Speaker 1: Where's our person, where's our boy? Charlie or no, our
Speaker 1: boy Friday, Okay, Charlie, where I got that? And then Josh,
Speaker 1: finally we have. In the nineteen seventies, some scientists discovered
Speaker 1: something called plastinization, and that is when all of the
Speaker 1: water and lipids and the body cells are replaced with
Speaker 1: polymers and you basically become like plastic, very flexible and durable.
Speaker 1: You don't decompose and you don't stink too bad. And
Speaker 1: that is used to preserve bodies, mainly for anatomical research
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: Or for bodies world or bodies the exhibitive.
Speaker 1: You've been, No, I've never been, but that's how they
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: It is really something. I mean, you're right there up
Speaker 3: on this corpse missing its skin and like it is
Speaker 3: a dead person, and it's really interesting. There's one, the
Speaker 3: one that I went to in Atlanta. It's two eyeballs
Speaker 3: and they're connected to the spinal cord which is going
Speaker 3: down and then the coming off the spinal cord are
Speaker 3: the major nerves of the central nervous system and that's it,
Speaker 3: and it's just laid out perfectly, really kind of surprising.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked that I haven't been to that yet.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool. It's definitely worth going to.
Speaker 1: I did the dialogue in the dark thing.
Speaker 3: I have not been there. That's next door. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was that kid. You know.
Speaker 1: I was a little disappointed. Yeah, not in the exhibit itself,
Speaker 1: but the way they do it. I think it could
Speaker 1: have been like really awesome. But the way they do it,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as awesome as it could have been. Just
Speaker 1: my take.
Speaker 3: Me and her sister went and she said they would
Speaker 3: have liked it. But there was this very loud, drunk
Speaker 3: woman who kept like falling into people what they wanted
Speaker 3: to kill.
Speaker 1: Nothing you can do about that, you know, in the
Speaker 1: dark weather, you could just like kick her in the
Speaker 1: shin and run away.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: We should mention Bob Doctor Bob Bryer real quick though.
Speaker 1: He is an Egyptologist who in nineteen ninety four said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to try and replicate the
Speaker 1: Egyptian technique and he did it. Chicken, Yeah, with a chicken,
Speaker 1: and he did it. It was pretty successful at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland School of Medicine. And one of the things
Speaker 1: he learned from doing this that the the way the
Speaker 1: body ends up looking as a result of the mummification process,
Speaker 1: not the fact. Yeah, that it's been in the ground
Speaker 1: for thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3: Like the shriveled, wrinkled look. Yeah. Yeah, So that's one
Speaker 3: thing I learned. That's a big thing to learn, though,
Speaker 3: I mean, think about it. That's Egyptology hasn't really advanced
Speaker 3: much in the last fifty years, has it not that
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I know Heraldo didn't find squat, No he didn't.
Speaker 3: No, that wasn't Heraldo. Heraldo looks for pones.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. I watched that one. That was fun.
Speaker 1: I was a youngster and I was so excited and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so disappointed when it was just a total disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well it's it for mummies, right, chuck you anymore? I'm
Speaker 3: I'm Are you mummied out? Yep? All right. If you
Speaker 3: want to learn more about mummies, check out m M
Speaker 3: M I E S in the handy search bar at
Speaker 3: howstuff works dot com. You can learn how to mummify
Speaker 3: a chicken on wiki how and what else? I think
Speaker 3: there might be a website for the mummies of wanna
Speaker 3: want to that's I think g u A n A
Speaker 3: j u A t oh maybe sounds good to me?
Speaker 1: Does it, you know, I think, uh, Matt and Rachel
Speaker 1: from Cool Stuff on the Planet did a thing on
Speaker 1: the Egyptian Mummy. Oh yeah, or not Egyptian Mummy museumm
Speaker 1: Wana Wanta Mummy musum.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, Cool Stuff on the Planet check it out. That
Speaker 3: is definitely worth watching as well. It's worth watching anyway.
Speaker 3: And I said handy search bar somewhere in there, which
Speaker 3: means I guess time for a listener.
Speaker 1: Man, Hi, Chuck and Josh and Jerry. My name is Maddie.
Speaker 1: I'm twelve years old. I love your podcast. I wait
Speaker 1: all day at school to get home so I can
Speaker 1: check for new podcasts. They always help me fall asleep,
Speaker 1: but not because they're boring, but because it gets my
Speaker 1: brain thinking and the brain gets tired.
Speaker 3: That's cool, Mary, So it's fun.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you give a shout out to
Speaker 1: my best bud, Casey. Casey has a tumor in his
Speaker 1: leg and is in a wheelchair. He tells me he
Speaker 1: is very miserable, but at least he gets to listen
Speaker 1: to me talk about you guys and fun fact. He
Speaker 1: also has a pet rooster named Lewis Sweet, and Lewis
Speaker 1: is house trained so he just runs around the house.
Speaker 3: That is awesome house strained chicken.
Speaker 1: So please give Louis I'm sorry Casey a shout and
Speaker 1: Louis while we're out. It sure make him feel better.
Speaker 1: It would make his day or even his year. And
Speaker 1: tell me which podcast you're going to put it on,
Speaker 1: because I am just twelve and some of them are inappropriate.
Speaker 3: Oh was this one appropriate? I don't know, Probably not,
Speaker 3: the shaking the brain part out. We'll figure it out, okay,
Speaker 3: We'll tell them to just listen to the listener mail
Speaker 3: and let it parents listen to the rest.
Speaker 1: And also a suggestion the infamous story of that French
Speaker 1: queen who said let the meat cake. I don't remember
Speaker 1: her name, that's uh Marie Antwin, Marie Antoinette. That was
Speaker 1: Kirsten Dunst. And remember I do not have Facebook, so
Speaker 1: please answer me by email, she says.
Speaker 3: And then oh is it she? Is it d d
Speaker 3: or tt It's d d oh okay.
Speaker 1: And then her signature is potato in a mushroom for Maggie.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means to all the
Speaker 1: kids are saying it these day. Really, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: potato and a mushroom everybody.
Speaker 3: You just said, Maggie, it's Maddie, right, Maddie. Okay, Maddie,
Speaker 3: thanks for that email. Maddie. Did we give a shout
Speaker 3: out to Lewis and Casey?
Speaker 1: Well, Casey, we hope you're feeling better, but I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to hear about that, and I hope you're up and
Speaker 1: around before.
Speaker 2: You know it.
Speaker 3: Take care of Lewis. Yes, if you're an egyptologist and
Speaker 3: you have some good mummy stories, we want to hear it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know what, if you have any good mummy story,
Speaker 3: we want to hear it, wrap it up in an
Speaker 3: email and send that email to stop for podcast at
Speaker 3: HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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