The Scientific Study of Mummies

  • Arthur C. Aufderheide
Cambridge University Press: 2003. 626 pp. £100,$150

The esoteric discipline of mummy studies has come a long way in the past 30 years. In the 1970s, scientific teams at Manchester Museum in Britain and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States undertook major projects that included full autopsies of Egyptian mummies, gaining valuable information about lung and heart diseases, dental health and intestinal parasites, as well as the fabrics and fluids used by the embalmers. Needless to say, the subjects of these autopsies lost their value as museum display objects. Non-invasive techniques, such as X-ray radiography and computed tomography (CT), have subsequently been used to achieve some of the same objectives without harming the exterior of the mummies.

The Scientific Study of Mummies is a veritable encyclopaedia of mummies and of mummy-research projects. Arthur C. Aufderheide is uniquely equipped to write such a book, having personally dissected more than 500 mummies. First he sets the stage with the history, purpose and mechanisms of mummification. Then he takes us on a world tour of mummies, ranging from the Americas (including the Peruvian Ice Maiden and a spontaneously mummified woman dubbed Miss Chile) to Europe (the Alpine iceman and Danish bog bodies, along with many less-well-known mummies), the Canary Islands (home of the Guanche mummies and the site of the First World Congress on Mummy Studies in 1992), Egypt, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The second half of the book reads almost like a medical text and assumes a basic knowledge of chemistry. The section on the soft-tissue taphonomy of mummies, defined by the author as “the effects of postmortem processes that altered the decay mechanism sufficiently to result in mummification”, is quite technical, but is clearly presented with ample illustrations. This discussion features numerous agents that cause decay and deterioration: water, bacteria, fungi and temperature fluctuations. Aufderheide then describes the full range of invasive and non-invasive research methods that have been used by mummy researchers, from dissection and tissue sampling to radiology, electron microscopy, endoscopy and magnetic resonance imaging (to be successful, the last technique usually requires the rehydration of the mummy tissues). In the palaeopathology section, we learn about the diseases and abnormalities that afflicted ancient as well as modern humans: everything from ear infections to silicosis. Lung tissue is often better preserved than other parts of the body, so there is more information on lung diseases than on other types. The author also describes the parasites found in mummies, such as the fish tapeworm that infected people who ate uncooked fish. As he notes: “the biomedical data these mummies supply tells us how the diseases we presently suffer have evolved”.

The author's training as a pathologist is reflected in his content and emphases. His discussion of Egyptian mummification chronology stresses the physical aspects of the mummies rather than their historical contexts. Cross-comparison of materials used in embalming, arm and leg positions, packing and organ removal are useful in understanding the range of practices over time, but no chronology can be complete without the archaeological context (such as site and tomb if known, region and circumstances of recovery). Another problem, as Aufderheide himself points out, is that the data he uses range from observations made 100 years ago to recent work. One must also take into account the changes in imaging resolution over time; our view of many mummies would benefit from re-examination by modern X-rays and CT scans.

The extensive bibliography includes both medical and archaeological references. A glossary of technical terms would have been helpful, particularly for those without training in the biological sciences. Nonetheless, this book should be required reading for any serious researcher on the sometimes gory but always fascinating subject of mummies and what they can teach us about human beliefs and behaviour.