mummy Archives - ATLANTIS RISING THE RESEARCH REPORT

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In an innovative endeavor to create a sensory bridge to the ancient past, a team of researchers has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3500 years ago.

Coined ‘the scent of eternity’, the ancient aroma will be presented at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark in an upcoming exhibition, offering visitors a unique sensory experience: to encounter firsthand an ambient smell from antiquity – and catch a whiff of the ancient Egyptian process of mummification.
The team’s research centered on the mummification substances used to embalm the noble lady Senetnay in the 18th dynasty, circa 1450 BCE. The researchers utilized advanced analytical techniques – including Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, High-Temperature Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, and Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry – to reconstruct the substances that helped to preserve and scent Senetnay for eternity.

“We analyzed balm residues found in two canopic jars from the mummification equipment of Senetnay that were excavated over a century ago by Howard Carter from Tomb KV42 in the Valley of the Kings,” says researcher Barbarra Huber. Today, the jars are housed in the Museum August Kestner in Hannover, Germany. The team found that the balms contained a blend of beeswax, plant oil, fats, bitumen, Pinaceae resins (most likely larch resin), a balsamic substance, and dammar or Pistacia tree resin.

Among those imported ingredients were larch tree resin, which likely came from the northern Mediterranean, and possibly dammars, which come exclusively from trees in Southeast Asian tropical forests. If the presence of dammar resin is confirmed, as in balms recently identified from Saqqara dating to the 1st millennium BCE, it would suggest that the ancient Egyptians had access to this Southeast Asian resin via long-distant trade almost a millennium earlier than previously known.

AR #69

Lincoln and the Afterlife

by Susan Martinez, Ph.D.

The story of Otzi, the ‘Ice Man,’ is well known. In 1991, two Alpine hikers on the border of Austria, at around 10,500 feet, discovered, as they approached the edge of a receding glacier, a partially exposed body in the ice. The autopsy revealed, amazingly, that the corpse was the remains of a prehistoric man. The “Ice Man,” it turned out, lived around 5300 years ago.

The story of Otzi and his well preserved belongings soon became a worldwide sensation. Recently, however, research by Norwegian archaeologists has cast doubt on the reliability of the familiar Otzi narrative (https://sciencenorway.no/archaeology-stone-age/new-research-on-5300-year-old-otzi-suggests-there-could-be-more-ice-mummies-out-there/2105033).

Veteran glacial archaeologist Lars Pilø thinks Otzi was refrozen more than once and was not as unique as previously believed. Pilø’s views are the subject of Secrets of the Ice a new documentary on Norwegian TV (https://secretsoftheice.com/).

One the most curious angles on the Otzi story, not mentioned by current accounts was covered in Atlantis Rising Magazine #94 by science writer Patrick Marsolek, significant evidence in the body of the Ice Man, indicating that he was being treated with the ancient Chinese medical practice of acupuncture.

X-ray scanning of Otzi’s body revealed that he suffered from arthritis in his hip joints, knees, ankles and lumbar spine. This information connects to one of the most interesting and provocative finds on the body, his 59 tattoos, mostly comprised of simple crosses or lines, arranged in 15 groups—on his left knee, above the kidneys, along the lumbar spine, and on his legs and ankles. Researchers noticed that many of these tattoos were clustered near the areas where he had arthritis—suggesting they had been placed intentionally as a form of acupuncture to treat his disease. Frank Bahr, president of the German Academy of Acupuncture, first made the tattoo-acupuncture connection on the ice man after studying a drawing of the tattoos and their placement on Otzi’s body. The points identified are still part of standard acupuncture practice.

Nine of the tattoos, experts found, are located on the Urinary Bladder meridian, commonly associated with treating back pain. One of the cross-shaped tattoos is located near the left ankle on a point which is considered the ‘master point’ for back pain.

Researchers also noted that five other tattoos located on the body corresponded with points located on the gall bladder, spleen and liver meridians, points that are traditionally used to treat stomach disorders. Apparently, Otzi’s acupuncturist was treating both Otzi’s joint pain and his stomach distress. Since the tattoos seem to be placed not randomly, but corresponding to specific points, and are even clustered on specific meridians, the tattoos seem likely to represent a meaningful therapeutic regime.

In all, eighty percent of Otzi’s tattoos fall on or near points that are still used by most acupuncturists today.