It had been assumed that before about 2500 BC, when Egyptians wanted to mummify their dead, they placed the wrapped bodies outside and let the hot, dry air and desert sand do the hard work. Deliberate mummification with preserving oils and resins was thought to be a much later development.

But the earliest known Egyptian burials date from 4500 to 3350 BC. These led some Egyptologists to suspect that mummification began early, but there was no hard evidence of this. For the first time, the bandages, skin and wadding from these ancient burials have been chemically analysed.

Stephen Buckley of the University of York in the UK and his colleagues used chromatography to identify a sticky, toffee-like resin found on linen wrappings on bodies from the El-Badari region of southern Egypt.

The resin contained “the same ingredients in roughly the same proportions” as found in much later deliberate mummifications, says Buckley. The mix of plant oils, animal fats, sugars, coniferous resins, natural petroleum and aromatic antibacterial agents would have made a poultice that repelled insects and preserved flesh.

“We knew from observation that there was artificial treatment of bodies at this early date, but what this research does do is tell us precisely what they were using”, says John Taylor of the British Museum in London, UK.

Taylor says that these early Egyptians were evidently accomplished embalmers, because they used complex mixtures of ingredients. As a result, “the beginnings of mummification could be even earlier”.

Origin of Egyptian mummies pushed back 2000 years

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