New evidence suggests mummification in Egypt started 1.5K years earlier than thought

A new study has revealed that newly discovered evidence suggests that the origins of mummification started in ancient Egypt 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Researchers from the Universities of York, Macquarie and Oxford have found that the origins of a central and vital facet of ancient Egyptian culture are pushed by over a millennium.

Traditional theories on ancient Egyptian mummification suggest that in prehistory-the Late Neolithic and Predynastic periods between c. 4500 and 3100 B.C.-bodies were desiccated naturally through the action of the hot, dry desert sand.

The researchers a combination of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and sequential thermal desorption/pyrolysis to identify a pine resin, an aromatic plant extract, a plant gum/sugar, a natural petroleum source, and a plant oil/animal fat in the funerary wrappings.

Predating the earliest scientific evidence by more than a millennium, these embalming agents constitute complex, processed recipes of the same natural products, in similar proportions, as those employed at the zenith of Pharaonic mummification some 3,000 years later.

Researchers Stephen Buckley said that having previously led research on embalming agents employed in mummification during Egypt's Pharaonic period it was notable that the relative abundances of the constituents are typical of those used in mummification throughout much of ancient Egypt's 3000 year Pharaonic history. Moreover, these resinous recipes applied to the prehistoric linen wrapped bodies contained antibacterial agents, used in the same proportions employed by the Egyptian embalmers when their skill was at its peak, some 2500-3000 years later.