A real surprise was the presence of substances sourced apparently from forests in Southeast Asia thousands of miles away.
The ancient Egyptians employed a host of exotic ingredients – some apparently imported from as far away as Southeast Asia – to mummify their dead, as revealed by a new analysis of containers unearthed at an embalming workshop more than 2,500 years old.
For the past two centuries, scientists could only speculate about certain embalming ingredients mentioned in ancient texts. But this workshop, discovered in 2016 by the late Egyptian scientist Ramadan Hussein near the ruins of the even-older pyramid of Unas and step pyramid of Djoser, held beakers and bowl-shaped vessels labeled with the ancient names of their contents, sometimes bearing instructions such as “to put on his head.
“Embalming was carried out in a well-organized, institutional way,” said biochemist and study co-author Mahmoud Bahgat of the National Research Centre in Cairo. An embalming substance called antiu in ancient texts long had been translated as the resins frankincense or myrrh. This study revealed it as a mixture of cedar oil, juniper and cypress oil, and animal fats.
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