Philippa Kaur

A workshop used for mummification at Saqqara in Egypt contains remnants of the substances used to make mummies, revealing many came from southern Africa or South-East Asia

Humans

1 February 2023

By Michael Marshall
Illustration of the underground embalming workshop in Saqqara in ancient EgyptNikola Nevenov
An underground workshop found at an ancient Egyptian burial site contains ceramic vessels with traces of the substances used to make mummies. They include resins obtained from as far away as India and South-East Asia, indicating that ancient Egyptians engaged in long-distance trade.
“We could identify a large diversity of substances which were used by the embalmers,” says Maxime Rageot at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “Few of them were locally available.”
The workshop, dating from around 600 BC, was discovered in 2016 at Saqqara, which was the burial ground of Egyptian royalty and elites for centuries. “It was used as an elite cemetery from the very earliest moment of the Egyptian state,” says Elaine Sullivan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wasn’t involved in the study.Advertisement
Close to the pyramid of Unas, archaeologists led by Ramadan Hussein, also at the University of Tübingen, found two vertical shafts dug into the ground. One was 13 metres deep and led to the embalming workshop, while the other was 30 metres deep and led to burial chambers. Hussein died in 2022.
It is the first Egyptian embalming workshop to be found underground, says team member Susanne Beck at the University of Tübingen. This may have been to keep the process secret, but it also had the advantage of keeping decaying bodies cool.
In the workshop, the team found 121 beakers and bowls. Many were labelled: sometimes with instructions like “to put on his head”, sometimes with names of embalming substances and sometimes with administrator titles.
Vessels from the embalming workshop© Saqqara Saite Tombs Project, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
The researchers chose the nine beakers and 22 bowls with the most legible labels for analysis. They studied the chemical residues left in the bowls to find out what substances had been used during embalming and mummification.
A host of substances, including plant oils, tars, resins and animal fats, were discovered. Two examples were cedar oil and heated beeswax. Many of the substances were known to be used in mummification, but some were new.
One new substance was dammar, a gum-like resin obtained from trees in India and South-East Asia. The name “dammar” is a Malay word.
The team also found elemi: a pale yellow resin resembling honey that comes from trees in the rainforests of South Asia and southern Africa.
The dammar and elemi show that Egyptian embalming drove early globalisation, says Philipp Stockhammer at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, another member of the team. “You really needed to transport these resins over large distances.” It fits with other evidence of long-distance trade at the time.
The ancient Egyptian elite liked exotic goods as much as modern capitalists, says Sullivan. At times when the state was powerful and organised, “we see a great interest in the outside world and in connections to the outside world and bringing those things from the outside world together”.
Stockhammer and Sullivan both say that the substances were transported by chains of traders. “The Egyptians don’t have to be going to the eastern side of India themselves,” says Sullivan.

The researchers were also able to translate two new words. Many texts on mummification refer to antiu and sefet. The former had been tentatively translated as “myrrh” or “incense”, and the latter as “a sacred oil”. However, because they were written on pieces of pottery with residue inside, it was possible to identify them. It turns out antiu is a mixture of oils or tars from conifers. Meanwhile, sefet is an unguent – an ointment or lubricant – containing plant additives.
Many of the substances had antibacterial and antifungal properties, and were combined into elaborate mixtures. For Stockhammer, the complexity of the substances displays “enormous personal knowledge that was accumulated through these centuries of experience of embalming human individuals”.
That fits with textual evidence that priests tasked with embalming were important people with considerable skill, says Sullivan. “They would have needed to have a lot of ritual knowledge and a lot of material knowledge,” she says. The body had to be preserved physically and rites had to be performed correctly according to the Egyptian religion. It was “both a spiritual and physical practice”.

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Humans

25 January 2023

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Humans

25 January 2023

By Simon Ings
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25 January 2023

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X-rays have been used to digitally unwrap the mummy of a teenage boy dating back about 2300 years, revealing 49 precious protective amulets, including a gold scarab signifying the heart

Humans

24 January 2023

By Alex Wilkins
The mummy of a boy digitally unwrapped in four stagesSN Saleem, SA Seddik, M el-Halwagy
Digital scans of an Egyptian mummy have revealed a teenage boy buried with a “second heart” made from gold, as well as dozens of other amulets that the ancient Egyptians believed were important for the afterlife.
The mummy, which had been left undisturbed in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo since 1916, is from around 300 BC in the Ptolemaic period.
Sahar Saleem at Cairo University digitally unwrapped the small, gold-covered mummy with computed tomography (CT), which involved using hundreds of high-resolution X-ray images to display the skeleton and soft tissue, and reveal 49 amulets of 21 different types.Advertisement

As well as finding a 3-centimetre golden scarab in the mummy’s chest cavity, symbolising a heart, Saleem and her team discovered a golden tongue inside the skull’s mouth area, an amulet in the shape of two fingers next to the embalming incision mark on the left thigh, and other religious amulets made from gold, semi-precious stones and brightly coloured ceramics.
The boy’s own heart remained in the chest, as a spiritual symbol, say the researchers, as was usual with Egyptian mummies.
The amulets had supposed protective properties for the arduous journey to the afterlife that the Egyptians believed came after death. “The family of the boy offered him a very expensive level of embalming treatment to be prepared properly and equipped for the underground journey to reach the afterlife safely,” says Saleem, such as sandals to walk out of the coffin and a golden tongue to speak with.
Amulets were placed on or inside the mummy in three columns, including a heart scarabSN Saleem, SA Seddik, M el-Halwagy
The researchers used the CT scans to 3D print a reconstruction of the golden heart. “The large, golden heart scarab amulet is really amazing, especially after I printed it and was able to hold it in my hands,” says Saleem. “There were engraved marks on the back of the 3D-printed amulet that could represent inscriptions and spells.”
These inscriptions appeared to include verses from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which states that the heart scarab is needed to silence the heart when judged by the gods en route to the afterlife.

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An analysis of ancient human skeletons finds that an increase in size and weight in some regions coincided with the rise of lactose tolerance

Humans

20 January 2023

By Luke Taylor
Milk is a rich source of energy and nutrientsAtlantide Phototravel/Getty Images
People in northern and central Europe increased in size between 7000 and 4000 years ago, while people elsewhere stayed the same height or got smaller, a study has found.
The growth of some Europeans was probably caused by them evolving lactose tolerance earlier, the researchers say.
The ability to produce the enzyme lactase into adulthood and digest milk is believed to have played a significant role in the health and evolution of ancient humans.Advertisement
Studies have suggested that those who were able to consume milk without health complications were able to overcome acute famine, making lactase persistence spread through natural selection.
To measure the impact of lactose tolerance on the size of humans, Jay Stock at Western University in Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues collated data on 3507 skeletons from 366 archaeological sites in seven regions – the Levant, southern, central, and northern Europe, the Nile Valley, South Asia and China – going back to 30,000 years ago.
The researchers used skeletal measurements to estimate the specimens’ heights and the size of weight-bearing joints to estimate their weights.
They found that the global mean height for men and women declined from 30,000 years ago onwards, reaching its minimum between 8000 and 6000 years ago. But in central Europe, stature increased between 7000 and 4000 years ago, while in northern Europe it increased between 8000 and 2000 years ago. Similar trends were seen for body mass.
The earliest evidence of dairy production is from around 9000 years ago in western Asia, from where it spread around the world, reaching central Europe at least 7400 years ago.
The authors theorise that the exceptional growth resulted from those European peoples becoming lactose tolerant, which allowed them to gain more nutrition from milk. In other parts of the world at this time, people only consumed fermented dairy goods, such as yogurt and cheese, which contain less lactose.

Although the data can’t prove that lactase persistence was the cause, the researchers argue that it is a compelling explanation. “We’re showing that the timing and the geography of body size increase corresponds with what we see in lactase persistence, and lactose is such an important component of diet as it provides very, very energy-rich, nutrient-rich sources of food,” says Stock.
However, the study found that people in Britain actually got smaller in the same period, despite being early milk drinkers.
“The authors have done some pretty fantastic stuff on stature, estimating body mass and how they changed through time. But I see no systematic, numerical analysis to suggest it is much more than a guess that selection was stronger on lactase at this time when we see increases in body mass,” says Mark Thomas at University College London.
Previous research has suggested that humans became smaller when they abandoned a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to cultivate crops, as relying on a single crop would have been less nutritious.
But the new study found strong evidence that people were getting smaller before they shifted to agriculture, hinting that there was another cause for their declining stature, says Thomas.

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