Special articles, The art of Mummification between science and superstition, part.3

The great progress in the medical aspect by the ancient Egyptian doctors had its incredible effect on the Mummification art. Just by looking in the hieroglyphic pictograms we get astonished of seeing the wealth of surgical knowledge which allowed them to have precise pictograms that describe human and animal internal organs such as f-1 which represents the lungs and F-2 which represents the heart. Another tremendous progress achieved by the ancient Egyptians once they discovered and used the sterilization for the first time. The palm-alcohol which was extracted by the ancient Egyptians out the date-palm tree was the best choice as a disinfectant for treating the mummy skin , cavities and tissues . The palm-alcohol was used repeatedly in a heavy concentration form in order to sterilize the mummy internally. The embalmer second great wish was to preserve the human appearance for the mummy which includes the facial features and body exact look which may give a big hope for the mummy to be recognized by its spirit. The embalmer main challenge while accomplishing that target was being him forced to allow the use of oils and ointments in order to retrieve the missing elasticity which the Natron salt deprived the mummy from. Returning the corpse elasticity is not an option as the step to follow should be the stuffing and the filling process for the mummy due to the need to approach restoring the original body image for the dead. So the paradox was by getting the oils to reach the body which may cancel and turn the dehydration process to be in vain. But the magical solution which the embalmer discovered was just the re-use of alcohol or simply repeating the sterilization for the mummy. The use of palm-alcohol becomes so critical once the embalmer to start to remove remains of the Natron salt after to finish the dehydration of the mummy which may take weeks. In most of cases , in ancient Egypt the embalmer was more than keen and efficient to clean all remains of salts by the use of that alcohol except of rare cases as for the mummy of Queen Hentaway who was unfortunate of getting the ancient embalmer to fail to wash the salt from her body before using the different oils which resulted of getting both the salts and the oils to interact then produce a foam such a soap foam. Queen Hentaway mummy history refers to the unlucky efforts made by the embalmers to restore by re-washing the salt from her body even the unluckiness projected once the Egyptian museum mummy restorers tried to treat the swollen face of her mummy which is due to the foam accumulation below the mummy skin but their treatment did not last for long. The air after all is the toughest enemy for the embalmer as by getting the air to remain in the corpse or allowing it in, defiantly it can speed up the decomposing process for the mummy. So the embalmer never gave up resisting the air during the embalming as he started his treatment by removing the mummy lungs as an air cavity to represent then his best treatment was once he used the tar substance to case the whole mummy with. Most of mummies were cased with tar which functions to seal the mummy skin and to keep the mummy an air- proof . Also tar protects the mummy skeleton from calcification. By Yasser Kamel to Museumegypt, All rights reserved. Copyrigt©Museumegypt.