Mummification – An historical and cultural overview

Abstract

Review was undertaken of historical mummifications which has shown that this process has occurred accidently and deliberately in many cultures globally for millennia in a wide variety of environments. Although Egypt is considered the major source of mummified material, mummification has occurred in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, Greenland and the Americas. Changes to bodies after mummification, with distortion and loss of tissues and organs, present challenges to contemporary investigators who may have difficulties in determining the time, cause and manner of death. A good example of this was the mistaken assessment that Iron Age sacrifices of bodies found in bogs in Denmark represented present day homicides. Modern investigative tools such as conventional radiography, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, endoscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis have provided more accurate and less destructive ways of examining such remains to enable valid scientific analyses to be achieved.