Archaeologists have identified a previously undocumented ingredient used in ancient Egyptian mummifications—and a famous medieval medicine concocted from the mummies themselves. At Germany’s Marburg University, researchers pinpointed traces of aloe-associated plant material in a 2,700-year-old mummy skull, and a popular centuries’ old apothecary cure-all known as Mumia vera aegyptiaca.
There is no one way to make a mummy. Mummification methods have varied across the world for thousands of years, even within a single culture. Ancient Egyptians honed their own processes over generations, and archaeologists are still sifting through millennia’s worth of artifacts and texts to better understand the iconic postmortem procedures.
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