Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: We're about to do this stuff you should know saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you like that? I did? Are you doing? Man? Great?
Speaker 1: Now that I've switched out my foul smelling microphone cover? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is actually take two things. I'm not getting near it,
Speaker 1: but I can you really imagine? Yeah, something's future facted
Speaker 1: on the mike cover, the peak clipper cover. Yeah, weird.
Speaker 1: You know, in real studios they change you out every
Speaker 1: now and then. These things have been running for at
Speaker 1: least a year. Fifty cents? All right, what's your chuck
Speaker 1: your sterling intro? Speaking of fifty cents, do you remember
Speaker 1: when we were talking about fossils. Oh, yeah, and we
Speaker 1: said that every once in a while, something happens so
Speaker 1: that a fossil naturally occurs um and that it's desiccated,
Speaker 1: the skin is dried out. That's a mummy. Yeah, who knew?
Speaker 1: I knew. Actually when we talked about that, I was
Speaker 1: like we have to do how mummies work. And here
Speaker 1: we are. I'm kind of surprised this one had slipped
Speaker 1: under the radar for so long, right up our Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I went and looked. I'm like, surely we do have it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's like stuff you should know died
Speaker 1: in the wool. Yeah yeah, um. And you're about to
Speaker 1: hear why dear listeners, because we're about to talk about
Speaker 1: all the things that happened to a corpse after death,
Speaker 1: which we've done before, but we need to go over again.
Speaker 1: Mummies are cool, though, they are very cool. So Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's say that you were stabbed in the stomach enough
Speaker 1: times so that you could not move any longer. You
Speaker 1: couldn't walk back home. It was out in the woods,
Speaker 1: and the one person you're with, the very person who
Speaker 1: stabbed you, left you there to die. You bleed out.
Speaker 1: You're dead. Things start happening to your body, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Up first is autolysis. Yes, that is uh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of gruesome. That's when your organs that have
Speaker 1: digestive enzymes actually say, well, this is what we do,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna start digesting the organs right and not
Speaker 1: like my stomach is eating itself because I'm hungry, Like,
Speaker 1: my stomach is actually eating itself. It's rupturing and oozing
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's being reduced to nothing. Um while
Speaker 1: that's going on. And then actually, I think if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, that kind of helps kickstart the process of
Speaker 1: puture faction. Right, yeah, autolysis starts within a few hours
Speaker 1: after you're dead. The body, the body knows. And if
Speaker 1: you want like a really um big overview of this
Speaker 1: or in depth look at what happens to the body
Speaker 1: immediately after death, you should listen to a Rigor Mortis
Speaker 1: podcast if you haven't already body farms. I talked about
Speaker 1: it in there too, So yes, intra faction, you're right,
Speaker 1: is followed by or follows autolysis. And that is when
Speaker 1: bacteria does its a little job and reduces everything to
Speaker 1: a skeleton. And you know, depending where you are, it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen in a few months, right, depending on where
Speaker 1: you are. Now, We as human beings are a subtropical species, right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: You know that, sure? So we are designed, if you
Speaker 1: believe in that kind of thing, to decomposed, decomposed most
Speaker 1: readily in a warm humid climate. That's where the bacteria
Speaker 1: that breaks down our tissue lives or thrives moisture warmth.
Speaker 1: If you have cold, dry, things change a little bit.
Speaker 1: Like a refrigerator exactly. Um, which is a good place
Speaker 1: to store body if you want to preserve it, or
Speaker 1: food if you want to eat it. It's a good
Speaker 1: point to your body if you want to eat it.
Speaker 1: For an in depth flick at that, you might want
Speaker 1: to listen to our cannibalism podcast though. That's right, Um,
Speaker 1: But let's say you don't have a refrigerator. Nature provides it,
Speaker 1: are you? On some occasions there's you'd see the ice man, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: see the ice man. Yeah, that's the ice man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Italian ounce. This dude is very well preserved
Speaker 1: natural mummy. It was amazing. Died and basically got buried
Speaker 1: in ice and kind of stayed that way. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think they have the impression that he fell into a
Speaker 1: crevasse died, but it was during like a blizzard maybe
Speaker 1: and he was covered with snow and ice that stuck
Speaker 1: around for millennia. Um. But he's so well preserved. You
Speaker 1: can see the tattoos on this um skin and still yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, and we knew. Hey, they tattooed people years
Speaker 1: ago exactly, little window into what life was like for
Speaker 1: ice Man. Yeah, he um he was. He had I
Speaker 1: think a nice little set of arrows and his bow
Speaker 1: and copper age European guy. I think he had a
Speaker 1: wallet sized photo of of you as well of me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was from the future. That's my that's what I think.
Speaker 1: You just blew my mind, Chuck good So ice as
Speaker 1: we talked about the fossils too, Um was a is
Speaker 1: a very good preservant. But nothing does it. Oh, Pete
Speaker 1: Boggs too. You remember I finally took you that picture
Speaker 1: of tolin Man. About Pete again, if you have not
Speaker 1: gone and looked at tole Man, it's awesome, Like his
Speaker 1: whiskers are still there. And he lived a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Right, what's his name? Did they name
Speaker 1: him just man? I would name him pet terrible. Um.
Speaker 1: So those two are pretty good. But the money, the
Speaker 1: natural money preservant is sand. Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: The reason why sand is such a great preservative is
Speaker 1: because it actually wicks away and absorbs and just removes
Speaker 1: the um any type of humidity in the body, which
Speaker 1: allows the body to desiccate, which means that there is
Speaker 1: no place for bacteria to live, which means the tissues,
Speaker 1: the tissue remains intact. And that's all about a mummy,
Speaker 1: is it's a it's a corpse with its tissue intact. Well,
Speaker 1: and this kind of kick started 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, and that preserved the body for so long.
Speaker 1: They said, well, hey, if the body is preserved, then
Speaker 1: that means the spirits preserved. And this all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we have new views on the afterlife and life. Right,
Speaker 1: So what they decided to do and this was so
Speaker 1: what I guess what you've just said though, was that
Speaker 1: the mummification, the whole concept of mummies that we have
Speaker 1: and that was so ingrained in the Egyptian culture, happened
Speaker 1: by accident, right yeah. Um, so they started they figured
Speaker 1: this out, So they start purposefully burying people in the
Speaker 1: sand with the intent of them being mummified, right, Um.
Speaker 1: But the problem is somewhere along the way they began
Speaker 1: to have horrible thoughts of their dead. Well, it's has
Speaker 1: choked with sand. So they started to say, maybe we
Speaker 1: should put some sort of barrier up in between the
Speaker 1: corpse and the sand. And that led to caskets, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: started with just like a wicker covering. Than that eventually
Speaker 1: led to wooden boxes. Uh, but here's the rub. Now
Speaker 1: the body is not preserved. Now the body rots. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just a normal corpse. Now you put a barrier
Speaker 1: between the body and the preservant in the form of
Speaker 1: a tomb. So what's the Egyptian to do then? Well,
Speaker 1: the Egyptians, being the very pious culture that they were,
Speaker 1: and the very um intuitive and smart culture that they were,
Speaker 1: you should for that, you should go read um did
Speaker 1: the Greeks get all their ideas from the Africans? Good article?
Speaker 1: Did you write them? Yeah? Did we do that, podcat man,
Speaker 1: let's do that, okay. Um. They they decided that they
Speaker 1: needed to rectify their um, their religious beliefs with their
Speaker 1: um problem. They're they're need to preserve bodies. And what
Speaker 1: did they do, Well, they said, maybe we can replicate
Speaker 1: this natural process that we've discovered through man made artificial means.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's kind of like it's called embombing Josh.
Speaker 1: And they actually figured out Chuck that like um, one
Speaker 1: of the one of the problems with the desiccation, the
Speaker 1: natural desiccation and the desert um was that the skin
Speaker 1: turned like this crisp brown, like you know, over baked chicken.
Speaker 1: It's exactly what it looks like actually. And Um, with
Speaker 1: these embalming techniques that they eventually mastered, they could they
Speaker 1: could preserve a body better than it could be preserved naturally,
Speaker 1: which is man conquering nature, conquering death. Even well, uh,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a huge success at first. They they
Speaker 1: would embalm the bodies mainly to keep it away from
Speaker 1: the elements, wrap it in linen, soaked in resin, and
Speaker 1: they would create a nice little shape pola forums it
Speaker 1: looked kind of like people. But that didn't really do
Speaker 1: a whole lot because the bandages didn't really halt the composition.
Speaker 1: They basically figured out that it happens from the inside out.
Speaker 1: It took him, It took him a few centuries of
Speaker 1: not millennia, basically wrapping it up and it's just disintegrating
Speaker 1: within the bandages at first, right, But those bandages are
Speaker 1: important because they stick around pretty much the whole time,
Speaker 1: same with the resin right. Yes, so those two very
Speaker 1: early embalming techniques are mummification techniques. UM stuck around, but
Speaker 1: it was a big leap when they figured out, oh
Speaker 1: wait a minute is going on inside and so we
Speaker 1: need to start addressing that by removing organs. Right, And
Speaker 1: it's about here I think that we we hit the
Speaker 1: Middle Kingdom and like the the mummies that we think
Speaker 1: of were produced in the from the eighteenth to twentieth
Speaker 1: dynasties of the Middle Kingdom. Yeah, that was when the
Speaker 1: like the heyday of mummification, right right, which was um
Speaker 1: between fifteen seventy and ten seventy five b C. The
Speaker 1: mummies that we think of, the ones that are still
Speaker 1: around like really well preserved today, they they were preserved
Speaker 1: during this time, right, right. So what do you do
Speaker 1: when when you realize that everything bad is happening to
Speaker 1: a corpse from the inside out? How do you how
Speaker 1: do you address that? Should we just walk through the
Speaker 1: process one by one, the gruesome process? Yeah, okay, the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you take it and it varies,
Speaker 1: you know, the different processes and within the processes, they
Speaker 1: had things that they would say, sort of like religious
Speaker 1: rights that they would go through as well. It's very
Speaker 1: sacred process. But they would take the body generally to
Speaker 1: the red Land desert region is not near a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people, so people aren't grossed out, but it
Speaker 1: is near the Nile River. They needed the Nile River
Speaker 1: to well, we'll see that in a second step one.
Speaker 1: Step one. You need the Nile for step one. They
Speaker 1: think they did in an open tents obviously to get
Speaker 1: some good ventilation going. And uh, the first place they
Speaker 1: took the body was to the Ibou, the place of purification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was basically the Nile or the place where they
Speaker 1: place near the Nile where they rensed the body with
Speaker 1: you washed the body off. It's like a rebirth symbol
Speaker 1: of rebirth. Right, so the the the corpse was hastened
Speaker 1: or some of the spirit was hastened in the afterlife,
Speaker 1: and we should probably stay here so it doesn't get
Speaker 1: too confusing. There were three spirits um that the Egyptians
Speaker 1: believed comprised a person, right, the ka, the ba, and
Speaker 1: the ak. Yeah, okay, it's always tricky to pronounce that, right,
Speaker 1: So I think um with this purification process the co
Speaker 1: or the or the bar or the ah, we're moved
Speaker 1: along to the to the next world. But the ka
Speaker 1: that was the one that was um inextricably linked with
Speaker 1: the corpse, which became the whole reason for mummification. As
Speaker 1: long as the corps was preserved, the co was preserved
Speaker 1: and the afterlife could you know, the person could live
Speaker 1: in the afterlife. But once the corpse died, the co
Speaker 1: died and that second death was final, which is why
Speaker 1: they wanted to preserve bodies in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. It's like the opposite of ashes to
Speaker 1: ashes and dusted us. Right. So, after they've washed the
Speaker 1: body and sort of reborn it and the rivers of
Speaker 1: the nile, Uh, they carried the body to the per
Speaker 1: Kniffer and that is the house of mummification. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of where This is the basement of the
Speaker 1: Fisher house. Basically huh and six ft under the Fishers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is in the basement. This is where
Speaker 1: Rico and the gang would get to work. Um. They
Speaker 1: would lay it on a wooden table. The body. Uh.
Speaker 1: They removed the brain by hammering a chisel through the
Speaker 1: bone of the nose, you know. I knew that already
Speaker 1: before this article. The Christian slater E's and like he's
Speaker 1: in like one of the creep shows or um Amazing
Speaker 1: Amazing stories or tales from the Crypto movie Pump up
Speaker 1: the volume. It might have been that, but I think
Speaker 1: it was like a smaller um vignette, like a mini
Speaker 1: movie within the larger movie. It's called like a Lot
Speaker 1: number nine or whatever. And Leaning the Cube, I think
Speaker 1: it was. Now that's called Brotherhood of the Tiger now
Speaker 1: I think they Yeah. Anyway, they there's a mummy who's
Speaker 1: hell bent on taking other people's brains using these hooks
Speaker 1: or whatever. Well, and that's exactly what they do. They
Speaker 1: make a nose hole basically larger than the nostrils they
Speaker 1: in sort of big hook, iron hook and start scooping
Speaker 1: it out. Eventually they go down to a spoon and
Speaker 1: eventually they just rents out the remaining bits of brain.
Speaker 1: And what's funny is so hold on they discard the
Speaker 1: brain because they thought, I don't know why we have
Speaker 1: this stuff in our head, but we probably don't need
Speaker 1: it in the afterlife, which is kind of unusual for
Speaker 1: the Egyptians because they preserved organs, you know, but the brain.
Speaker 1: And what's what's funny though, Like I think what we
Speaker 1: just kind of meander past that we should kind of
Speaker 1: um meditate on for a second, Chuck, is that they
Speaker 1: get to a point where they filled the head with water.
Speaker 1: I imagine close the nose in the mouth and shake
Speaker 1: the head around to slash all this stuff out, and
Speaker 1: then lean the head over and let all the last
Speaker 1: bits come out. That's how I would do it. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if they did shots of that stuff as
Speaker 1: like part of the ceremony, I would draw the line there. Well,
Speaker 1: they probably just thought, I don't know, they didn't even
Speaker 1: know what the brain was. Yeah, that's true, that's just waste.
Speaker 1: So the brains 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 and then preserving those,
Speaker 1: like you said, except for the kidneys, because they didn't
Speaker 1: think they were important either, which they were, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the kidneys are important, but it's not like
Speaker 1: brain important. Well, I mean, you need kidneys to live.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they preserve the appendence you need, all of
Speaker 1: you that was probably the most holy of the organs.
Speaker 1: So they actually when they preserve these things, they would um,
Speaker 1: they would wrap them in uh in resin strip of linen. Right,
Speaker 1: Basically they would mummify each organ and then they put
Speaker 1: them in in canopic jars. Basically it was like here's
Speaker 1: your body, and then also here are your organs. They'd
Speaker 1: leave the heart though, because they thought the heart was
Speaker 1: you know, linked to the soul and the spirit. And
Speaker 1: they're kind of on the money there, I think. So
Speaker 1: these organs take up space in our chest and abdominal cavities. Um,
Speaker 1: so they would actually um stuff the body with like
Speaker 1: incense and other materials as well. Right, yeah, well, first
Speaker 1: they'd rent it once they like I forgot, they take
Speaker 1: out the lungs to the abdomen yeah right right there
Speaker 1: you can't get along little side slit, and then they
Speaker 1: would rent the chest cavity with palm wine and then
Speaker 1: they would stuff it actually basically straw what I didn't say,
Speaker 1: what actually just said other materials. How would you straw?
Speaker 1: Maybe frankinsense, little mirror, Yeah, just to complete the trilogy,
Speaker 1: straw franken cent sin mur that that kept the body
Speaker 1: from like caving in on itself, basically containing a little
Speaker 1: bit of shape. And then here is the key. This
Speaker 1: is the key to momification. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say it now. I found it
Speaker 1: on the internet. There is a step by step, very
Speaker 1: easy to follow recipe on UM. I think WICKI how
Speaker 1: which I don't normally go on, but it's the only
Speaker 1: place I can find a recipe for mommifying a chicken
Speaker 1: using the Egyptian method, and it calls for UM natron, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the key. Natron is this UM basically a compound
Speaker 1: that the Egyptians figured out they could gather and and
Speaker 1: and combine from the Nile, which is basically baking soda
Speaker 1: sodium bicarbonate and um table salt sodium chloride. You mix
Speaker 1: the two together and it becomes this perfect person of it.
Speaker 1: So they would put nature in powder, which is like
Speaker 1: this just accelerated the technique of mommification like by light
Speaker 1: years UM and they would cover the body with this
Speaker 1: stuff and leave it and it would just completely dry
Speaker 1: the body out. Right. Yeah, this took about forty days.
Speaker 1: They had to guard the body while this was going on, obviously,
Speaker 1: because they didn't want vultures digging through the natren for
Speaker 1: what lies beneath. After the forty days, they move the
Speaker 1: body then to the wabet, which is the house of purification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and call that incense and the stuffing out, refill it
Speaker 1: with the nature in resin, soaked linen and other materials
Speaker 1: again whatever these mysterious things are. Then they would sew
Speaker 1: all the incisions up, cover the skin with resin, and
Speaker 1: then say, hey, it's time to wrap this puppy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is where we get the idea for the mummy,
Speaker 1: our modern idea of a mummy always wearing like they
Speaker 1: are always coming off. You can just see the eyes,
Speaker 1: maybe teeth or something. So this is where we're at
Speaker 1: there at the bandaging procedure that thirty five or forty days,
Speaker 1: while um the nature and powder was doing its work,
Speaker 1: working away all of the basically acting as the desk
Speaker 1: knt Um, the family of the deceased was going around
Speaker 1: town going do you have any linens we can have forever? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you have some linens we can have and cut
Speaker 1: you like your linen's to spend eternity in the heavens
Speaker 1: above with our dead. Um. They collected about four thousand
Speaker 1: square feet just top the top of my head. That's
Speaker 1: about how much. They gathered um of linen and would
Speaker 1: bring it to the embalmers, and the embalmers would say, hey,
Speaker 1: we like this piece that pieces horrible. Um, you're really
Speaker 1: gonna bury your your dad in this, And they would
Speaker 1: take the best stuff and they would cut it into
Speaker 1: or they would tear him into strips three to eight
Speaker 1: inches wide a bandages, and they would start the rapping,
Speaker 1: which would take a little while, right, Yeah, it takes
Speaker 1: uh week or two, I guess probably depending on how
Speaker 1: big the body is. Common sense. Start with the hands
Speaker 1: and feet. You wrap all This is the initial under wrapping,
Speaker 1: I guess. You wrap everything individually, each little finger, each
Speaker 1: will toe everything's wrapped. And then once everything is wrapped individually,
Speaker 1: they do a whole body wrap ah, applying new layers,
Speaker 1: coating the linen with again the hot resin to keep
Speaker 1: everything in place, uttering spell. Sometimes they would wrap amulets
Speaker 1: over different parts of the body, wrap it up in
Speaker 1: there with you, protect you in the next world, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, and then pressto chango you are
Speaker 1: a mummy. And before we go further the process we've
Speaker 1: just described this really ordinate, wonderful, lengthy process where you
Speaker 1: would think about it like there's so many There were
Speaker 1: a lot of Egyptians running around, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them died on any given day, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of work to be done. So this process that
Speaker 1: we just described was for the people who had lots
Speaker 1: of money. For some reason, the wealthy have always been revered, right,
Speaker 1: and I've also gotten special treatment, right right. Um, if
Speaker 1: you were just an ordinary schmoke like me or Chuck,
Speaker 1: you were going to get the budget package, which is
Speaker 1: basically like instead of like carefully removing all of the
Speaker 1: organs each one, they would inject oil like this oil
Speaker 1: mixture into your cavities. Let it sit for a few days. Um,
Speaker 1: it was to stop up all your orifices first leak out,
Speaker 1: thank you. So I don't know how they did that.
Speaker 1: I guess with other materials that you right, So they
Speaker 1: would stop you up full of oil, let it, let
Speaker 1: you sit for a few days, and then unstop your
Speaker 1: orifices and let all the oil drain out and it
Speaker 1: would carry the liquefied organs and tissue out with it.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier, a lot faster. So even this
Speaker 1: many thousands of years ago. You get what you pay
Speaker 1: for exactly. That's pretty sad. Yeah, it's always been a
Speaker 1: budget package. Or maybe that's a good thing that it
Speaker 1: wasn't only just reserved, like if you don't have any money,
Speaker 1: you just can't get Mummified's the way to go. They thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's think of it a cheaper way
Speaker 1: to do this for you folks. Let's just fill you
Speaker 1: up with the oil, stop up your orifices, and give
Speaker 1: you a good shake. So um, you're you're prepared. You're
Speaker 1: all wrapped. However, they got your organs out there out
Speaker 1: you're bandaged, um, and you're now about to be outfitted
Speaker 1: what's called a cartonage cage, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: a breastplate, um, some cool like forearm armor, leg armor,
Speaker 1: pretty much this thing that's gonna hold your body together
Speaker 1: for a while. And a funerary mask, which is like
Speaker 1: the famous masks we think of when we think of
Speaker 1: like King tut like it's a death mask. And these
Speaker 1: were extremely important because they directed the spirit the car
Speaker 1: to the right body your words. So it was in
Speaker 1: a person's visage or possibly that of a god, but
Speaker 1: the spirit would be in on you know what to
Speaker 1: look for. They would know that. That's how they knew.
Speaker 1: This guy is supposed to supposed to either look like
Speaker 1: Josh or Anubis. Either way, I think that's him right
Speaker 1: away there, so let's grab him. And speaking of Anubis,
Speaker 1: you would be committed to your tomb uh following a
Speaker 1: funeral procession where you were carried in your sue right,
Speaker 1: which that's what you think of with King Tutt. That's
Speaker 1: the casket that looks like a person, like the gold
Speaker 1: casket in the shape of a human. Let's a suet
Speaker 1: um that would be carried to your tomb, and there
Speaker 1: would be a priest dressed as the jackal god Anubis.
Speaker 1: Um there were there was the ceremony of the mouth,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool because there was some sort of
Speaker 1: weird understanding. I guess that Um, you had died and
Speaker 1: now certain things had to be stored, and the ceremony
Speaker 1: of the mouth was um. This um passing over of
Speaker 1: sacred objects to like the across the suet's face. The
Speaker 1: caskets face UM. And it would restore your five senses
Speaker 1: because you need that exactly so you're placed. And this
Speaker 1: is weird, Chuck, did you find this odd? That your
Speaker 1: casket was placed leaned up against the wall. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: almost like I would do that while I was getting
Speaker 1: everything ready, and then I would lay it down. So
Speaker 1: it almost made me think that they kind of forgot
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, well, we left that first one
Speaker 1: leaning against the wall, so I guess that's the way
Speaker 1: we do it. But that's not true. I'm sure they
Speaker 1: had a very good reason, probably because it was easier
Speaker 1: to just walk up right out of there. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think they wanted to leave it upright, but
Speaker 1: standing it upright they didn't have, like the perfectly level
Speaker 1: floor probably wasn't too secure, so they just gave it
Speaker 1: a little lean, sure, little help, which is far less
Speaker 1: secure than just laying it down on the floor. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: following that, you are your furniture. Don't forget your canopic
Speaker 1: jar of organs late next to you little food maybe? Sure? Um,
Speaker 1: your furniture, Um, basically the stuff you're gonna need in
Speaker 1: the next life to be comfortable, and your set. Your
Speaker 1: tomb is sealed up, and it's probably inscribed with something
Speaker 1: along the lines of as for anybody who shall enter
Speaker 1: this tomb in his impurity, I shall wring his neck
Speaker 1: as a bird's there's a standard um mummy curse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a mummy curse on the tomb. Yeah. People became in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties Howard Carter dug up King Tut's tomb
Speaker 1: and people were just crazy for mummies at the time.
Speaker 1: Westerners are like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: This cursed thing is so neat. Uh. Laurel and Hardy
Speaker 1: are doing mummy curse movies and uh. A microbiologist from
Speaker 1: Germany name Guitard Cramer or Cramer Uh. He said there
Speaker 1: may be something to this cursed thing because they bury
Speaker 1: people of food produce his mold spores. So when they
Speaker 1: unearthed this tomb, all these mold sports are released into
Speaker 1: the air and it might kill you. So it's not
Speaker 1: that there's something to the curse, but it could lead
Speaker 1: people to tie the two together. Unearthed tomb, then you die. Certainly,
Speaker 1: there's something weird about the Carter expedition who Um unearthed
Speaker 1: King Tut's tomb in two because eleven of the people
Speaker 1: who were involved, not necessarily present, but involved, UM died
Speaker 1: within seven years. I think eleven people in a canary
Speaker 1: his canary died like UM right right when they entered
Speaker 1: the tomb and Copra ate it. That's bad luck, it is,
Speaker 1: and then it just went downhill from there. Um. So
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of explanations, but it's also um oddly
Speaker 1: intriguing and like you said, egypt Mania gripped the West.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they loved it all right, um. And there
Speaker 1: was actually unraveling parties where people would get their hands
Speaker 1: on mummies and then like unbandage them, see what's in there,
Speaker 1: which is like, that's not what you do with a
Speaker 1: dead body. Yeah, it's bad luck too. So that pretty
Speaker 1: much is the Egyptian mummy, and that's what we mainly
Speaker 1: think of. But they weren't the first people to do
Speaker 1: this kind of thing in the in the interesting yeah,
Speaker 1: they the first. The oldest mummies actually on the planet
Speaker 1: are from northern Chile, the Chinchorro people Cinchero, let's go
Speaker 1: to Cinchorro. Uh this they started doing this about two
Speaker 1: thousand years before the Egyptians. But they were not very
Speaker 1: much like uh, the Egyptians. They basically dismembered and disemboweled
Speaker 1: the body, put it back together again, sewed it up,
Speaker 1: and then covered it with black mud. Well they put
Speaker 1: it back together with like straw and sticks, and that's
Speaker 1: what they had. It was like they made qupy dolls
Speaker 1: out of like these bodies, basically covered it with black
Speaker 1: mud and shaped it into a human form. Uh. But
Speaker 1: they believe that this wasn't necessarily done to preserve the
Speaker 1: body for the afterlife. Maybe it was more for the
Speaker 1: people left on the planet Earth to mourn the death
Speaker 1: of their loved one keep them around a little longer,
Speaker 1: which is very sweet because they saw evidence of like
Speaker 1: retouching of the paint, signs of wear and tear, so
Speaker 1: that you know, basically they were kept in the households
Speaker 1: for a little while. They think basically as statutes, freaky
Speaker 1: freaky statues. And that was five thousand BC, which is
Speaker 1: two thousand years before the Egyptians came onto the scene
Speaker 1: at all. It's right, um, And the would you say
Speaker 1: the Chinchorro people. I think I went with Chinchorro, but
Speaker 1: someone will point that out if I'm wrong. Um, They're
Speaker 1: not the only ones in South America who got into
Speaker 1: modification either. The Incas very famously did as well. They
Speaker 1: had a little habit of sacrificing children to the gods. Um,
Speaker 1: and they cultural relativism chucked. They would um through this
Speaker 1: process like the child and the child's family were just
Speaker 1: treated like like royalty before this, like it was a
Speaker 1: high honor to be chosen to be sacrificed to the gods. Um.
Speaker 1: And they would get the child really wasted on this
Speaker 1: fermented corn concoction, take the child up to the cave.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think they would whack the kid over the head,
Speaker 1: or other times they would get the child so wasted
Speaker 1: that um, they just would leave them there in the
Speaker 1: cold temperatures, exposed to the freezing temperatures, and the child
Speaker 1: would die of exposure. I can't see jerks about this,
Speaker 1: you can, um. But the there's a very famous mummy
Speaker 1: called the Maiden, who is a fifteen year old girl
Speaker 1: and she was sacrificed as thanks to the gods for
Speaker 1: a really good corn harvest by the Incas in Peru
Speaker 1: five dred years ago. Did you see that picture I
Speaker 1: sent you. It's like looking at a girl who's sleeping,
Speaker 1: but she's been dead for five hundred years, like you
Speaker 1: you if you've been to South America as I know
Speaker 1: you have, or Central America, like she looks just like
Speaker 1: one of those girls you might see down there like
Speaker 1: Central American indigenous person. She's probably short. Then she looks
Speaker 1: kind of shorty. That'd be funny. She's like six too.
Speaker 1: But then moving on up, there's also one and it
Speaker 1: didn't make it into this article, but chuck, I've been
Speaker 1: there myself. Wanna want to. Mexico has a mummy museum
Speaker 1: and they have the world's smallest mummy. I think it
Speaker 1: might have been a fetus, but they were all naturally
Speaker 1: mummified um to the great surprise of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: townspeople who had to move a graveyard and found like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of mummies. How big it was very
Speaker 1: small object uh coffee cup, coffee cup, standard coffee cups.
Speaker 1: But then there's like people. They were still wearing their
Speaker 1: suits and it's it's really amazing. You walk into this
Speaker 1: little Mexican building and there's just dead people everywhere, just
Speaker 1: behind this glass. It's very neat. If you ever go
Speaker 1: to Wanna want to Mexico, you have to go to
Speaker 1: the mummy museum. I think I should. Yeah. Lady Chang China,
Speaker 1: Chinese were they were lousy with mummies. Yeah, they loved
Speaker 1: the mummify people. She was an aristocrat from about two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and she is believed to be about
Speaker 1: the best preserved ancient mummy so far. Did you see
Speaker 1: her picture? Yeah, so their tongue sticking up pretty well
Speaker 1: mummified and her hair still. Yeah, she was. They haven't
Speaker 1: studied her a whole lot, the Chinese haven't, so they
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how she was prepared, but they do
Speaker 1: think that mercury and the embalming fluid might have something
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah, then I would imagine that
Speaker 1: will do mercury, Yeah sure. And um also in China,
Speaker 1: mummies have kind of rewritten history a little bit. UM,
Speaker 1: some very very ancient mummies from UM one thousand BC
Speaker 1: before one thousand BC, UM, they found some people of
Speaker 1: Indo Iranian descent. You know, they linked them to Um
Speaker 1: like basically Mesopotamia through tattoos and like other implements that
Speaker 1: they had in the shape of their face, the way
Speaker 1: they looked, and they figured out like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: these people were like Indo European traders, what are they
Speaker 1: doing here? And they just made their way to settle
Speaker 1: right in in the deserts of China before the Han
Speaker 1: dynasty ever showed up. So that kind of changed things
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm sure. Uh, if we talk about mummies,
Speaker 1: we got to talk about the more modern day mummies
Speaker 1: because of the big interest in mummification thanks to tut
Speaker 1: being found was the big one. That's right around the
Speaker 1: time Lenin died in Russia and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's preserve Lenin and disclaiming the Kremlin. So that's exactly
Speaker 1: what they did. And we do not know exactly how
Speaker 1: because 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 him in a preservative bath every now
Speaker 1: and then, and he's wears a waterproof suit. That's right.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen pictures of Linen or av parone,
Speaker 1: did they look pretty lifelike. But hers was hers is
Speaker 1: way cool. They basically replaced all the fluids in her
Speaker 1: body with wax, right, which would be a very modern
Speaker 1: take on the ancient practice. There's also um incorruptible corpses
Speaker 1: of the Catholic faith. It's basically a person who is
Speaker 1: so pure on earth that they their body just didn't
Speaker 1: didn't rot. And there's example those there's one. He's like
Speaker 1: a prince. He's like a child prince. I think he
Speaker 1: died in like he died more than a thousand years
Speaker 1: ago or about a thousand years ago, um, and his
Speaker 1: his body is totally preserved and there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: he was embalmed or anything like that. They don't understand
Speaker 1: that there are some bodies out there that just the
Speaker 1: five logic that I wrote an article and you should
Speaker 1: read it. It's a miracle. How can a courts be incorruptible?
Speaker 1: We need to keep in track of these awesome ideas.
Speaker 1: Where where's our person? Where's our boy Charlie or no,
Speaker 1: our boy Friday Charlie uh and then Josh, finally we
Speaker 1: have In the nineteen seventies, some scientists discovered something called plasticization,
Speaker 1: and that is when all of the water and lipids
Speaker 1: in the body cells replaced with polymers and you basically
Speaker 1: become like plastic, very flexible and durable. You don't decompose,
Speaker 1: and you don't stink too bad. And that is used
Speaker 1: to preserve bodies, mainly for anatomical research at this point,
Speaker 1: or for bodies world or bodies the exhibit I have have
Speaker 1: you've been no, I've never been but that's how they
Speaker 1: do it. It It is really something. I mean, you're right
Speaker 1: there up on this corpse missing its skin and like
Speaker 1: it is a dead person, um and it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's one the one that I went to in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: It's two eyeballs and they're connected to the spinal cord
Speaker 1: which is going down and then the coming off the
Speaker 1: spinal cord are the major nerves of the central nervous system.
Speaker 1: And that's it. And it's just laid out perfectly, really
Speaker 1: kind of surprising. I'm shocked that I haven't been to
Speaker 1: that yet. It's pretty cool. It's definitely worth going to.
Speaker 1: I did the dialogue in the Dark thing. I have
Speaker 1: not been there. That's next door. That was that kid.
Speaker 1: You know. I was a little disappointed. Yeah, not in
Speaker 1: the exhibit itself, but the way the way they do it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it could have been like really awesome, but
Speaker 1: the way they do it, it wasn't as awesome as
Speaker 1: it could have been. Just gonna take you. Me and
Speaker 1: her sister went and she said they would have liked it.
Speaker 1: Put there was this very loud, drunk woman who kept
Speaker 1: like falling into people. What they wanted to know? You
Speaker 1: can do about that near the dark weather, you could
Speaker 1: just like kick her in the shin and run away.
Speaker 1: We should mention Bob a Dr Bob Bryer real quick though.
Speaker 1: He is a Egyptologist who or said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I want to try and replicate the Egyptian technique. And
Speaker 1: he did it, Yeah, with the chicken, and he did
Speaker 1: it was pretty successful at the University of Maryland School
Speaker 1: of Medicine. And one of the things he learned from
Speaker 1: doing this that the uh, the way the body ends
Speaker 1: up looking as a result of the mummification process, not
Speaker 1: the fact that it's been in the ground for thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands, like the shriveled, wrinkled look. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's one thing I learned. That's a big thing to learn, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. That's Egyptology hasn't really advanced
Speaker 1: much in the last fifty years. And it not that
Speaker 1: I know is I never Aldo didn't find squat, No,
Speaker 1: he didn't know that wasn't he Aldo her Aldo looked
Speaker 1: for um components. I watched that one. That was fun.
Speaker 1: I was a youngster and I was so excited and yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's so disappointed when it was just a total disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's it for mummies, right, chucky anymore? I'm I'm
Speaker 1: are you mummied out? All right? Um? If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about mummies, check out m you m
Speaker 1: M I E s in the handy search bar, How
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You can learn how to mummify
Speaker 1: a chicken on wiki how and um what else? I
Speaker 1: think there might be a website for the mummies of
Speaker 1: wanna want to? That's I think g U A n
Speaker 1: A j u A t oh. Maybe sounds good at me,
Speaker 1: does it? You know? I think Matt and Rachel from
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff in the Planet did a thing on the
Speaker 1: Egyptian Mummy or not Egyptian Mummy Museum? Want to want
Speaker 1: to Mummy Museum? Yes, Cool Stuff on the Planet check
Speaker 1: out that is definitely worth watching as well. It's worth
Speaker 1: watching anyway. And I said handy search bar somewhere in there,
Speaker 1: which means I guess time for listener mail. Uh hi,
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh and Jerry. My name is Maddie. I'm
Speaker 1: twelve years old. I love your podcast. I wait all
Speaker 1: day at school to get home so I can check
Speaker 1: for new podcasts. They always help me fall asleep, but
Speaker 1: not because you're boring, but because it gets my brain
Speaker 1: thinking and the brain gets tired, that's cool. Uh was
Speaker 1: wondering if you give a shout out to my best bud, Casey.
Speaker 1: Casey has a tumor in his leg and is in
Speaker 1: a wheelchair. He tells me he is very miserable, but
Speaker 1: at least he gets to listen to me talk about
Speaker 1: you guys. And fun fact, he also has a pet
Speaker 1: rooster named Louis, and Lewis is house strained, so he
Speaker 1: just runs around the house. That is awesome house strain chicken.
Speaker 1: So please give Louis, I'm sorry Casey a shout and Lewis.
Speaker 1: While it make him feel better, it would make his
Speaker 1: day or even his year. And tell me which podcast
Speaker 1: you're gonna put it on, because I am just twelve
Speaker 1: and some of them are inappropriate. Oh was this inappropriate?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Probably not this shaking the brain part out.
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out, Okay, I'll tell him to just
Speaker 1: listen to the listener mail and let his parents listen
Speaker 1: to the And also a suggestion the infamous story of
Speaker 1: that French queen who said let the meat cake. I
Speaker 1: don't remember her name's marine that with Kristen Dunns. And
Speaker 1: remember I do not have Facebook, so please answer me
Speaker 1: by emails, she says. And then she is a d
Speaker 1: D or t T it's d D. And then her
Speaker 1: signature is potato in a mushroom for Maggie. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that means. All the kids are saying
Speaker 1: these days. All right, potato in a mushroom? Everybody, you said, Maggie,
Speaker 1: it's Maddie, right, Maddie. Okay, Maddie, thanks for the email. Maddie.
Speaker 1: Did we give a shout out to Lewis and Casey
Speaker 1: Well o, Casey, We hope you're feeling better, but I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to hear about that, and hope you're up and
Speaker 1: around before you know it. Take care, Lewis. Yes, if
Speaker 1: you're an egyptologist and you have some good mummy stories,
Speaker 1: we want to hear it. You know what, if you
Speaker 1: have any good mummy story, we want to hear it.
Speaker 1: Wrap it up in an email and send that email
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you