Mummification ointment is older than the Pharaohs

A recent study has revealed that the embalming fluid used by ancient Egyptians to mummify the dead is far older than previously thought.

The study, published in PLoS ONE concludes that the multi-ingredient ointment used to preserve the dead was being used 2000 years earlier than scientists originally thought, according to Nature.  

Carbon dating suggests that the oldest sample of funerary wrappings, discovered at a grave site near the Nile, covered a body in around 4200 BC. The bulk of the material used in the ointment was resin, animal fat and plant sterols. The blend includes resin that came from at least 1000 kilometres away, proving that the region had already established a trading network.

Before this study, the earliest known use of resin for mummification was around 2200 BC.

The substance included trace amounts of three compounds that appear only when resin is strongly heated, which provides evidence that the balm was deliberately cooked.

“The discovery that these substances had themselves been deliberately processed before use points to a more sophisticated level of treatment of the dead that had previously been suspected at such an early date,” said John Taylor, an Egyptologist at the British Museum in London.