Hello there tiktakers! Has any of you ever dressed up as a
mummy for Halloween or a costume party? Some of you probably have.
After all, Mummies have always played an important role in the world of horror.
However, do you know what mummies really are? Or even better: Do you know all the different
kinds of mummies that exist? We certainly didn't! And we got really surprised when we
learned about the many peoples and cultures that used to mummify their dead, tiktakers.
First of all, technically speaking a mummy is: The corpse of a human being or an animal,
which has been conserved pretty well without decomposing,
due to natural causes or special substances applied to the corpse. So,
let's start by keeping in mind that there can be different kinds of mummies:
When most of us think of a mummy, we most likely think about the Egyptian ones.
And sure enough, the Egyptian mummies are probably the most well-known in the world.
One of the most famous ones was the mummy of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun,
which was discovered in 1922, and has been an object of study and cult since then.
In Egypt, the process of mummification consisted of several steps:
- First, the corpse had to be washed and perfumed on the outside
- Then the organs would be removed, and placed in glasses
- Then the abdomen would be filled with myrrh, and the body would then be submerged
in a mineral called natron for 70 days - After that time, the body would be
dried pretty well, and then would be completely stuffed with myrrh
Once that entire process was completed, the body would then be wrapped in bandages
impregnated in resins or tar. Sometimes, amulets would also be added to the bandages. And lastly,
all that was left was to put the mummy in the sarcophagus. Keep in mind that this process
was carried out only for very important people tiktakers – commoners in Egypt were
buried in pits with specific characteristics that made natural mummification possible.
And even though we know about Egyptian mummies really well,
turns out the Egyptians weren't the first ones to mummify their deceased!
Two millennia before them, the Chinchorro culture already practiced mummification in
northern Chile, and they also employed pretty sophisticated mummification techniques!
However, it took a long time for us to discover that. It was in 1917 when several researchers
found near the Atacama desert, at the Chinchorro beach, a few bodies that were surprisingly well
conserved. Archaeologist Max Uhle was in charge of studying and classifying them,
but at the time they didn't have the advanced techniques we have today to analyze them.
And so, many questions about those bodies could not be answered yet.
We had to wait until 1983 to discover that those were in fact, the most ancient mummies in the
entire world. During some works in a promontory, a graveyard filled with bodies was found.
This time around, anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza was in charge of investigating the place,
and with his team they managed to determine that those bodies were approximately
7000 years old. That marked a before and after in history, tiktakers!
Over time, we learned that at first, the Chinchorro people limited themselves to bury
their dead in the dessert, covering them with mats and camelid skins.
They would also add shells, fishhooks, or fishing nets to the bodies. However, over time they also
started doing artificial mummification. The first mummies date from the year 5050 B.C.,
and ended up completely black because they painted their bodies in magnesium.
The process was specially gruesome, since they would decapitate the corpse, then cut off the
feet, and then flay all of its skin off. Then the brain would be removed to fill the skull with
herbs, ashes or sand, and then they would tie up the skull and the jaw with rope afterwards. They
would leave just the skeleton of the body to then rebuild it, and cover it with a white ash paste.
Later on they would put the skin and hair back on, to then spread magnesium all over the body.
This changed more or less in the year 2500 B.C.. There is evidence that then appeared a second
type of mummies: Red mummies. In this case, they would extract the dead person's organs through
small cuts. Then the body would be dried up, and held with sticks. Inside, they would put ashes,
feathers, herbs, and other substances. All of this was done through the hole of the head, part
of the body which they would then put back in its place. Another curious aspect about this is that
they also replaced the flesh on the face. In that case, a red paste was spread over the entire body.
And later on, in the year 2000 B.C., they started to use a different technique. This
time around they would smoke the bodies, and then cover them in a thick layer of sand and clay.
As you can see, the mummification process has evolved over the years, but the Chinchorro culture
developed pretty advanced conservation techniques for the time. Were you familiar with any of this?
We were truly impressed with everything we learned about mummies when making this video!