An Egyptian Expert Claims to Have Scientific Proof of the Mummy's Curse

News has it that the "Kids, don't try this at home" vault has uncovered the secret recipe that Egyptian funeral directors used to preserve human remains. The formula was found in ceramic pots from an ancient Egyptian embalming workshop near one of the oldest pyramids ever built. There are a few surprises on the ingredients list, which demonstrates how much effort they put into this enigmatic process. Thinking about it now, we should have put this formula in the "Adults, don't try this at home" folder as well. We can make a human body endure forever if we follow the ingredients and methods outlined in Saqqara. “Ancient Egyptians developed an outstanding ability to protect the human body from decomposition or destruction after death—instigated by the belief that the decomposition of the corpse presented a physical obstacle toward attaining the afterlife15. Performed by specialized and learned individuals (ritualist embalmers), embalming was both a chemical and a ritual process.” (from “Biomolecular analyses enable new insights into ancient Egyptian embalming” in the journal Nature) Since the beginning of the exploitation and study of Egyptian tombs millennia ago, mummies—or mummified bodies, as they are now more often known—have attracted archaeologists and the general public. Though it contributed nothing to our understanding of their embalming process, researching and unwrapping them helped put an end to the defilement of these human remains. Tools and containers discovered in tombs and, later, ancient embalming facilities have thus become the focus of fresh research on the mummification processes. In 2016, one of these workshops was found at the necropolis of Saqqara, the old Memphis burial grounds next to the Pyramid of Djoser, also called the Step Pyramid. Additional digging revealed a shaft leading to a subterranean embalming room and burial chamber, where the mummification secrets were discovered, in addition to the partially subterranean workshop. We analysed the organic contents of 31 ceramic vessels recovered from a 26th Dynasty embalming workshop at Saqqara. These vessels were labelled according to their content and/or use, enabling us to correlate organic substances with their Egyptian names and specific embalming practices.” How practical! Maxime Rageot, a biomolecular archaeologist from Germany's University of Tübingen, and colleagues were able to narrow down the riddles of Egyptian mummification thanks to the labelled containers discovered in the workshop. The earliest of these clay jars dates back to 664 BCE, and several of them have embalming instructions like "to put on his head" or "bandage with it." Some even went so far as to include the embalming workshop administrator's name. Previous study had relied on chemical examinations of mummies and their wrappings or few historical documents; this discovery put the team far ahead of the curve. With these items, the archaeologists were able to re-create the space as it had been 2700 years ago, when it served as an actual embalming facility.The German and Egyptian researchers examined the remnants with a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer at the National Research Centre lab in Giza, Egypt, to identify the compounds. One of the most reliable methods for determining the composition of a sample is gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The most legible labels were on 22 red bowls and 9 beakers that contained the samples. Embalming the head was the purpose of one sample that included elemi resin, Pistacia tree resin, beeswax, and juniper by-products, as stated on the jar label. The most typical combination included juniper, cypress, and cedar oil or tar, animal fat, plant oil, and elemi, a fragrant essential oil that belongs to the same botanical family as myrrh and frankincense. However, one bowl just contained animal fat. Scholars of mummification were surprised to learn about the use of elemi and juniper/cypress. I found the directions on the jars to be really useful: “Six other sherds provided information on substances used for washing the body, reducing bodily odour and softening the skin, as well as a recipe for the treatment of the liver and another for the stomach. The bowl labelled with ‘to wash’, contained markers of oil or tar of conifer, and the bowl inscribed with ‘to make his odour pleasant’ showed evidence of ruminant animal fat (adipose or dairy) and degraded Burseraceae resin. In the vessel with inscriptions related to the treatment of the skin, which may have occurred on the third day of embalming, we identified a mixture of animal ruminant fat (adipose or dairy) combined with heated beeswax.” A second surprise was the vast array of mummification compounds used at the Saqqara workshop. Surprisingly, the majority of these substances were imported. and frequently from faraway places. The Dead Sea was probably the source of the bitumen. The Pistacia, olive, cedar, juniper, and cypress tree resins originated from various parts of the Mediterranean basin. The Levant, a vast territory in Western Asia's Eastern Mediterranean region, is the source of by-products from the cedars of Lebanon (Cedrus libani). Beeswax and animal fats might have been the sole locally sourced materials. It was clear from this that the embalming procedure was the driving force behind Egypt's thriving international trading network. The fact that some tropical resins have made it all the way to Southeast Asia was brought to light by study co-author Professor Philipp Stockhammer. But what really captivated him were the techniques used by these old embalmers. “'I was fascinated by this chemical knowledge. In the embalming process the skin is immediately endangered by being colonized by microbes that would eat up the skin. These people used antibacterial and antifungal substances to keep the skin best preserved, but without having any microbiological background – without knowing about bacteria. My personal highlight was to see this enormous knowledge that has accumulated through centuries of experience of embalming.” The ancient embalmers' profound understanding of chemistry and biology was on full display when they uncovered the mummification process's components and techniques. They were aware that natron salt, when applied topically, dried the body from the inside out, while bitumen and beeswax reduced moisture by sealing the skin's pores. Still unsolved is the final piece of the mummification puzzle: how did the ancient embalmers find the substances' qualities and develop the formulas that allowed corpses to endure for thousands of years? An Egyptian biochemist working out of Cairo's National Research Centre, Mahmoud Bahgat, contributed to the study and proposed a remedy: An Egyptian Expert Claims to Have Scientific Proof of the Mummy's Curse He asserts that the symptoms he had after opening a sealed ancient Egyptian tomb in 2019—including "hallucinations," "coughing up blood," and a near-death experience—are "scientific" evidence of the so-called Mummy's Curse. Ramy Romany is an Egyptologist. Despite centuries of urban legend linking that "curse" to the deaths of tomb explorers, no evidence of its existence has ever been found "scientifically." Does Romany truly possess the proof necessary to transform this renowned work of fiction into a reality? There are three individuals who are closely linked to mummies but who have escaped its curse: Boris Karloff, who was in the 1932 original, Lon Chaney Jr., who was in three sequels, and Brendan Fraser, who was in a modern trilogy of mummy films but who did not play the role of a mummy. The most well-known "curse of the mummy" story began fifteen years before the first Karloff picture. After discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon (George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon and expedition financier) opened it, went inside, and spent time in the mummified pharaoh's unsealed burial chamber. The tomb exploration was cut short when Lord Carnarvon grew unwell and died on April 5, 1923, shortly after leaving. Shortly after he fell ill, whispers of a "Mummy's Curse" started circulating. When he passed away at the age of 56, the first "death by mummy" had occurred; doctors had diagnosed blood poisoning and pneumonia due to an infected cut and a mosquito bite. The four more deaths of individuals connected to the opening and investigation of Tut's tomb, namely Howard Carter, were inferred to be the result of the mummy's curse and served as the basis for the films. No matter the circumstances, the'mummy's curse' is blamed whenever archaeologists get sick or die when investigating tombs, such the case of the ten out of twelve conservationists who, in 1973, excavated the tomb of King Casimir IV Jagiellon of Poland, who lived in the 15th century, and who all died within a few weeks or months. Is the curse caused by the mummy or something else within the tomb?  “While filming, we went into a tomb that hadn't been opened in years. We unlocked the door and the locals kept their distance at first to make sure there were no snakes or curses of any kind. Not believing in curses, we just went straight down the stairs. The tomb seemed endless. We kept going down, and it's quite dusty. And I breathed it all in And that day I was returning on foot to Cairo, and I became unwell.” Here we have Ramy Romany, an Egyptologist and filmmaker. His 2019 "Mummies Unwrapped" episode was filmed at the Amarna archeological site, which was constructed by the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten—the pharaoh before Tutankhaten—as he recently disclosed on The Jordan Harbinger Show. The filmmaker decided to investigate several unopened tombs that had lain dormant for at least 600 years. He entered one such tomb and started filming what he found. "There's that ammonia bat urine smell, there's been snakes in there, along with just these very strange smells all going in and your body is telling you 'stop breathing this is not good'... I'm a host on the Discovery Channel, I'm yelling at the camera and being very excited and I'm breathing all this crap in." Ramony returned to his accommodations once the day's activities came to a close. He recounts waking up with a 107 F temperature, blood in his cough, and hallucinations. In spite of his claim that "None of the doctors really knew what I had," medical professionals were summoned and antibiotics were prescribed. The antibiotics took four days to take effect, restoring Romany's normal temperature and eradicating her coughing fits and hallucinations. He went on to say that this was the closest he had ever been to death. "The reason that I'm telling you this story is because it is true, the scientific Curse of the Mummy is very true. I just opened a tomb that was closed for only 600 years let alone for the 6,000 years one and I was in a horrible shape the next day. So the curse of the mummies do exist scientifically." Well then... Within 24 hours after entering an ancient tomb that had likely not been opened in 600 years, Ramy Romany fell fatally ill from breathing in a mixture of particles from soil, tomb materials, animal and bug feces, chemical reactions, potential human remains, and more. No way can that be considered "scientific" evidence of a mummy's curse. To get to the bottom of this, we checked out a recent piece in The Big Think that retraces our steps back to 1973, when the tomb of Polish ruler Casimir IV Jagiellon was opened. It seems like 10 out of 12 persons who went inside died there. The tomb was found to be filled with Aspergillus flavus, a dangerous mold that can cause aspergillosis in humans. Aspergillosis affects the lungs, causes acute inflammation and breathing problems, and can even grow in the lungs, spread throughout the body, and be fatal to those with weakened immune systems. Microbiologist Bolesław Smyk later conducted an inspection of the tomb and confirmed this discovery. According to research, Aspergillus flavus fungus spores can live on grains found in tombs or even on human remains, where they can remain active for hundreds of years. It was connected to the tomb of Tut and the death of Lord Carnarvon in 2003, according to researchers. “On March 17, 1923, The Times of London reported that Lord Carnarvon suffered from ‘pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes.’ This description is consistent with invasive Aspergillus sinusitis with local extension to the orbit.” An illustration of Pulmonary aspergillosis caused by mold fungi Aspergillus. Because of his compromised immune system, Lord Carnarvon was particularly susceptible to the deadly mold that had not previously been associated with ancient tombs; this mold was known to cause multiple chest infections after he was in a major automobile accident in 1901. It seems like there's some solid evidence that ancient mummy tombs may have harbored a poisonous mold that afflicted those with compromised immune systems with deadly diseases. It's not a very compelling plot, but it may make filmmakers and tomb explorers like Ramy Romany think twice about entering without protective gear like breathing apparatuses and heavy-duty masks. 15