It is believed that mummification began in Egypt when people realized that the dry heat of the sand dried and preserved corpses buried in the desert. When people began burying the dead in stone tombs away from the drying sand, they used chemicals such as soda salt and vegetable resins for embalming.
The new study builds on a 2018 study in which scientists found that mummy wrappers were soaked in a mixture of vegetable oil, aromatic plant extract, gum or sugar, and heated pine resin.
This time, the scientists were able to identify a wide variety of substances used by embalmers by analyzing the remains from a collection of 31 ceramic vessels. These include juniper, cypress or cedar oils or resins; various resins, including resins from menengiç trees; animal fats, beeswax and vegetable oils. Most have already been found in mummies, but two resins – dammar and elemi – have not been found anywhere in Egypt before. They also found bitumen from the Dead Sea.
Source: Ferra
