21st Century mummy

Just a quick pointer to a cool article on a recent attempt at mummification (here's the link). Stephen Buckley, a chemist at York Univeristy in England, has spent two decades studying how ancient Egyptians made mummies.  He studied tissue samples and chemical traces left on canopic jars in an effort to reproduce the method.  He then tested the process in his shed, using pig's legs as a proxy for human flesh (there's a DIYbio project for you!).  I'm not sure if this guy is married, but even here in the Dark Lab, this work would be pushing the limits.  Anyhow, this year he felt that he was ready for prime time.  He placed an ad looking for suitable volunteers and the lucky person was... Alan Billis, a London cab driver.  Terminally ill with lung cancer, he went through the mummification process after he died. By all accounts, it was a success and the body will be kept for at least a year to study.  Hopefully, Alan is hanging out with a bunch of cool, Egyptian princesses.  Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will argue over whether our society placed a high value on cab drivers, or if Mr. Billis was simply a member of the ruling elite.  They will come up with grand theories on how he lived, how he died, and why he was the only surviving mummy of the period.  Should make for an interesting read.



Cat mummy at the British Museum (link)



To me, it is truly amazing that with all of today's technology, it is difficult to reproduce the mummification procedure.  The Egyptians likely had years of empirical data to build from and since it was considered a sacred ritual for the upper class, there was significant motivation for young priests to be good at making a mummy.  I can see a room full of young mummification interns, trying to preserve rats or some other suitable test animal.  After months of work, the mentor unwraps the package, only to find a rancid, decomposing corpse. "Aw, man," the student whines (or whatever the angsty teen expression was at that time).  He then slouches his way over to the stone quarry.