A new document found has provided previously unknown details about the mummification process . Researchers have found a 3,500-year-old medical papyrus, which makes it the oldest manual on the process they carried out to prepare their loved ones after death.
Specific research has focused on the Louvre-Carlsberg papyrus , named after its two 'owners': the well-known French museum and the Carlsberg Papyrus Collection at the University of Copenhagen . The papyrus, divided into two parts, originally belonged to two private collectors. Despite the fact that several sections are missing, it has been possible to date around the year 1450 BC , surpassing the other two examples of embalming by more than a thousand years.
In it, new evidence has been revealed regarding the entire process of embalming the face of a deceased in ancient Egypt, in which the face was covered with a piece of red linen and aromatic substances.
Medical text on the use of plants
Formerly, mummification was considered a sacred art whose knowledge was limited to very few people . Hence, according to experts, the secrets could be passed on by word of mouth . The newly found text is the third of its kind, which is also the oldest in the world. In it, reference is made to the medicine of plants and skin inflammations .
Sofie Schiødt, an Egyptologist at the University of Copenhagen , has been in charge of analyzing the document, in which she found "extremely detailed descriptions" of this entire mummification process and of which nothing was known until now in the other two manuals .
New details of mummification
One of these unknown procedures to date refers to the embalming of the face with a remedy made from aromatic substances and binders , which are cooked to form a liquid with which to coat a piece of red linen .
This fabric was placed over the face of the deceased, making a kind of protective layer of aromatic and antibacterial matter . This process was repeated every four days, while the body was covered by cloth and straw dipped in aromatic substances , in order to ward off insects and scavengers.
Despite being the first time these procedures have been revealed, Egyptologists had already examined some mummies whose faces were covered in cloth and resin , which, according to Schiødt, "would be a good fit."
