ArchaeOLogy > Ask a Scientist about Mummies

ASK A SCIENTIST ABOUT MUMMIES

Title slide: tan background with mummy wrap texture.

KID’S VOICE: Are mummies real?

On screen text: —Anne, age 8

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: Mummies are real.

Photo of open sarcophagus, showing wrapped mummy inside, with an ornate scarf and jewelry draped over its torso. Top of sarcophagus shows brightly colored ancient symbols and writing.

THOMAS: Mummies have been around for thousands of years.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: There are even modern mummies that are being made today. Mummies are real for sure, it's just the movies that aren't real.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Were Egyptians the Only People That Used Mummification?

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KID’S VOICE: Were Egyptians the only people that used mummification?

On screen text: —Ian, age 12

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: We all think of mummies as coming from Egypt, and that's true. Ancient Egypt, thousands of mummies.

Illustration of the globe with the continents highlighted in yellow, to demonstrate places where mummies are part of various cultures.

THOMAS: But the surprising thing is, mummies were made in every continent of the world except Antarctica. 

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: There are lots of cultures who thought it was somehow important to keep their dead relatives around.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Have You Ever Dug Up a Mummy?

Title slide: tan background with mummy wrap texture. 

KID’S VOICE: Have you ever dug up a mummy?

On screen text: —Leah, age 7

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: I'm an archaeologist. I'm a scientist. And I'm lucky enough to work here at the American Museum of Natural History, where I'm in the field six months a year. We're digging things up.

Photos of speaker at archaeological digs throughout his career. 

THOMAS: And once in a while, in a really unusual circumstance, yes, we do run in to mummies.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room. 

THOMAS: In this case, in the Americas. Most of these are natural mummies that have dried up in a very arid place out in the desert.

Photo of archaeologist working in a very dry site, wearing a filtering face mask.

THOMAS: But there are mummies, and we have excavated them. And we can learn a great deal from the mummies that we find.

Photo of a technician scanning a mummy in an MRI machine.

Photo of images produced by an MRI machine, showing what’s inside the wrappings.

THOMAS: And we can do it respectfully, because we now have technology to where we don't invade that mummy in order to learn about it.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Would You Want To Be Mummified?

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KID’S VOICE: Would you want to be mummified? 

On screen text: —Joshua, age 9

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: I spend a lot of my time with mummies, maybe a little too much. And some of my students kind of look at me, “Hey, do you kind of envy being a mummy? Somebody who died 3,000 years ago and still is around and not looking that bad?”

Photo of ancient Egyptian painting depicting people making a mummy.

THOMAS: I think if I were an ancient Egyptian, I would have loved to have been mummified.

Illustration of ancient Peruvians engaged in a ceremony.

THOMAS: I think if I were an ancient Peruvian, I might have second thoughts, because many of those mummies are children who were sacrificed on tops of mountains.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: In my culture, I don't have any real desire to become a mummy. But if I did, I could go to the state of Utah. There is actually an industry that they would turn me into a mummy, if that's what I want.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Why Did They Wrap Up Mummies?

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KID’S VOICE: Why did they wrap up mummies?

On screen text: —Maya, Age 8

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: Usually when we see a mummy, it's a dead person who's wrapped up.

Photo of a wrapped-up mummy, with brightly colored designs painted on linen and draped on top of the torso.

THOMAS: Now, why is that?

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: Well, the reason anybody would want to mummify a relative or a leader is because you want to somehow preserve that body. 

Close-up photo of tight wrapping patterns on the head of a mummy. 

THOMAS: Several steps involved, but the last step is always to wrap it up tightly so that that deceased person persists for a long time.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Do Mummies Still Have Flesh On Them?

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KID’S VOICE: Do mummies still have flesh on them?

On screen text: —JZ, age 12

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: When you look at a mummy in a museum case and actually see the body itself, face to face with a real mummy that's thousands of years old, it does have flesh still on it, but the flesh has changed.

Photo of a mummified hand to demonstrate flesh and fingernails that have been specially treated by the mummification process.

THOMAS: It's been dried out in a very special way, and treated by experts who know how to do this, so it doesn't feel like flesh.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: It feels like beef jerky. It's still flesh. It's still there. You don't want to eat it.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Do Mummies Dry Out?

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KID’S VOICE: Do mummies dry out?

On screen text: —Avi, age 8

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: The reason we get mummies is because you stop the natural decay.

Photo of a mummy in very dry, sandy surroundings.

Photo of a mummy partially submerged in water.

THOMAS: It can be really dry. It can be really wet. 

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: In Florida, we have entirely preserved human brains that are 8,000 years old because they've been under water all the time. The important thing as a scientist when we deal with mummies is to preserve the conditions of that mummy in the lab that duplicate the conditions that created it as mummies.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Where Did the Word Mummy Come From?

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KID’S VOICE: Where did the word "mummy" come from?

On screen text: —Elizabeth, age 10

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

On screen text: mum-my 

DAVID HURST THOMAS: The word "mummy" is a funny one. If you lived in Europe, you might call your mother that.

On screen text: mum-my = mommy

THOMAS: But the word "mummy" that we use in science comes from an old Turkish term that actually refers to a rock. It's the process of making somebody like a rock, and it was picked up 800 years ago in Old English. So, a mummy is somebody who's mummified, and mummified looks a lot like being turned into stone.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Why Did They Take the Brain Out of the Nose?

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KID’S VOICE: Why did they take the brain out of the nose?

On screen text: —Amelia, age 9

Scene change: Man sitting in a study with books, a globe and a desk, begins to speak.

On screen illustration of a body silhouette, demonstrating the brain with a red line thru it, and the heart’s locations in the body.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: In ancient Egyptian life, the brain was the least important of the organs that any of us have. They didn't want to save it. They wanted the heart. So how do you get rid of a brain? Well, how do you get rid of a brain?

Animated graphics indicate the ear, nose, and mouth as points of entry to the brain.

THOMAS: There are only two or three ways you can get into a brain if you want to keep some somebody's body intact.

Animated demonstration of how the brain was removed with hooks.

THOMAS: And so, the Egyptians had special hooks that they could put up through two or three holes in the skull, and pull that brain out in chunks, and just toss it away. Who cares about brains? We're people who care about the heart.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Why Did They Preserve Dead People?

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KID’S VOICE: Why did they preserve dead people?

On screen text: —Isabel, age 10

Photo of an Egyptian mummy with gold mask and intricate wrappings. 

DAVID HURST THOMAS: The most famous mummies come from ancient Egypt.

Thomas sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

THOMAS: And in that case, there is a belief that if the body is preserved, well-preserved, and sent off in a certain way, there's an afterlife.

Photos of Egyptian mummies, with elaborate, painted wrappings.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: And you have to have your body in good shape to be part of that afterlife, so that's what your loved ones do is spend a lot of time and effort keeping you perfect.

Photo of Egyptian painting showing an animal-headed figure working on a mummy.

THOMAS: Now it's a very different explanation in Peru. Why do they make mummies in Peru? It's not because of the afterlife. It's because a family member died.

Photos of Peruvian mummies sitting in a brick structure, with a dirt floor.

THOMAS: You want that person around in your life still. And the Peruvian mummies very often are mummified in a way where they can still be part of the family.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: They come out on holidays. They come out in parades. They remain part of that family because they're mummies.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Was Anyone Ever Mummified Alive?

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KID’S VOICE: Was anyone ever mummified alive?

On screen text: —Ashton, age 11

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: There are religious people in Japan who've been doing this for 1,000 years. The idea is if you preserve your body in a special way, it will show a particular kind of purity. How do you do it? Well, it takes about 3,000 days. But that first 1,000 days, what you do is you basically just drink tea that's made of a bark of a special tree. You lose all the fat, and you start the process of introducing things into your body that will help preserve. The second 1,000 days, you eat almost nothing. You pray.

And then what happens for the last part, you go into a room, and they close the door. They give you a bell. You ring the bell every day. And when you stop ringing the bell, they assume you'll die. People will come back at some point, years later, and see if you've actually become a mummy.

Photo of mummy, dressed in a bright red robe and hat that is embroidered in gold, holding prayer beads in one hand, and brightly colored ribbons in the other hand, sitting behind glass.

THOMAS: If you have become a mummy, that's a sign from heaven of ritual purity, and you're accepted.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: If you didn't make it, then you're just another ordinary person who isn't a mummy.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Why Did They Stop Making Mummies?

Title slide: tan background with mummy wrap texture.

KID’S VOICE: Why did people stop making mummies?

On screen text: —Owen, age 12

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: The ancient Egyptians made mummies until they were taken over by another culture, the Romans, who didn't do that anymore.

Illustration depicting how the Egyptians were conquered by Roman soldiers.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room. 

THOMAS: In Peru, there's a longer history of making mummies for several different reasons, but they stopped doing that when they were conquered by a power that came in and told them, don't do that anymore.

Illustration of European conquistadors and ancient Peruvians confronting each other.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: But there's still cultures in the world who continued to do mummies. They just weren't conquered. And they could keep doing what they'd been doing for a long time.

ASK A SCIENTIST: Mummies – Were There Animal Mummies?

Title slide: tan background with mummy wrap texture. 

KID’S VOICE: Were there animal mummies?

On screen text: —Eliot, age 10

Scene change: Man sitting in a study, with books, a globe, and a desk, begins to speak.

DAVID HURST THOMAS: In ancient Egypt, of course, the mummies are famous. The kings and queens and important people, with their gold and all. But if you look closer, there are also other mummies that are there.

Photo of two mummified alligators. 

THOMAS: Sometimes they're alligators. Sometimes they're pets. And for some reason, there are kitty cats, lots of them.

Photo of mummified cats.

THOMAS: In ancient Egypt, it was actually an industry to create cat mummies that would be buried with people.

Thomas speaking in book-filled room.

THOMAS: There's an archaeological site where a million cat mummies were created for sale. And if you look closely at some of the mummies that turn up in the Egyptian tombs, they're fakes.

Photo of mummified cats, demonstrating real mummies and fake mummies, labeled real and fake. Real mummy has x-ray showing cat skeleton inside. Fake mummy is a solid bundle with no bones inside.

THOMAS: There's somebody who was trying to pass off a cat mummy, and all there are sticks and stones inside. We know that because we have the technology to look inside the kitty cat.