National Geographic: Ancient Graves: Voices of the Dead Page #2

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in the next world

to enjoy eternal life.

To prevent decay, the bodies of

the dead were drained of moisture,

and reduced to the consistency

of leather.

Everyone wanted to be mummified.

There may have been cut-rate

embalming for the poor,

first-class treatment for the rich.

Even animals were mummified,

to accompany the dead

on their final journey.

Over some thirty centuries,

countless mummies were made.

But countless were also destroyed.

Almost from the moment they were sealed,

the Pyramids and nearly

every other well-

appointed tomb were ransacked

by thieves.

Kings or commoners, bodies were

hacked apart and left in tatters.

Things got worse when Europe

developed a taste for mummies.

By the 12th century,

they were imported by the ton

to be ground up and mixed

in potions purported to cure

everything from headaches to impotence.

In 1798, Napoleon's campaign

spawned a new wave of "mummy-mania."

Over the next century,

hundreds were dissected

both in laboratories

and at fashionable unwrapping parties.

The supply seemed endless.

Mummies made

cheap fertilizer and fuel.

In the 19th century,

trains from Cairo burned stacks of them

to power their steam boilers.

Our fascination with mummies continued

unabashed well into the 20th century.

"Is it dead or alive?

Human or inhuman?

You'll know. You'll see.

You'll feel the awful,

creeping crawling terror

that stands your hair on end

and brings a scream to your lips!

The Mummy!"

Today, Egypt's mummies are treated

as fragile time capsules.

Science now has the tools to explore

their secrets without destroying them.

"Take this side off right here."

Researchers can coax clues

about daily life 3,000 years ago

from the tiniest samples

of tissue and bone.

Egyptologist Bob Brier,

of Long Island University,

knows more than most about mummies.

But just how a mummy became a mummy

was a question that irked him for years.

"The party line

among Egyptologists was always,

'Oh we know how they did it,

they removed the brain through the nose,

they removed the internal organs.

We know pretty much how they did it.'

But there's no papyrus

that tells how to mummify a human.

The Egyptians never wrote down

how they did it.

It was a secret,

probably a trade secret."

A brief description was recorded by

Greek historian Herodotus around 450 BC.

For Brier,

it was not the final word.

I started to do

a mental mummification,

trying to just imagine exactly

what happened.

At some point I realized,

the only way we'll ever really

find out is to do it."

In 1994, Brier set about to perform

the first Egyptian-

style mummification

in two thousand years.

In Cairo, he tracked down

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