I have to admit, I have seen a LOT of egyptian mummies-and they look pretty bad-all black, dried out, and shrunken. Of course, these folks died >3000 years ago. So, was the vaunted Egyptian emblaming process all that good? Were the corpses lifelike for a while? If you want a REAL bang-up embalming job today (lifelike appearence, good for >1000 years) how much would you have to pay forit, today?
IANA Egyptologist, but I think the corpses must have looked dark, dried out and shrunken when they were ‘new’. AIUI the embalming process involved covering the body with natron and burying it in the hot dry sand to remove the moisture from it.
Sort of like people-jerky.
The embalming process might not seem all that good, until you look at the bodies of people who weren’t embalmed, naturally or artificially, from the same time period.
“This is an outrage! I was going to eat that mummy!”
and
“This is Zevulon the great. He’s terryaki style.”
Back To The OP
As has been said, the Egyptians didn’t have some great embalming method. Basically, you scoop out the insides and dry the body in a desert climate. If you want world class preservation, you want the people who preserve Lenin. Last time I checked, their methods were a state secret.
I think some people actually did an Egyptian mummification on a Discovery channel (?) show several years ago. They used a donated body; and I remember it took a while, but seemed to work.
It’s not just the embalming process - some mummies in some periods were “resculpted” out of papier mache or the equivalent. So that would take time and effort in terms of costs.
Also, you’d have to spring for the canopic jars to hold the removed organs, if you wanted to go that route. Part of the problem with this question is that mummification technique changed over time, and what we think of as sort of the “classic” process is relatively late.
You might try Gunther von Hagens. His Plastination process seems to fit the bill—though I don’t know for sure how long the “shelf life” of the preserved bodies would be (though I’d think they’d last pretty dang long, if not indefinately), or how they look without…well, without having the skin removed.
I also don’t know about cost, or any legal issues. (Damn nanny state…if I want to have my ghoulish semi-skeletal corpse preserved and used as a coatrack in my family home, it’s my own business!)
It’s so dry in Egypt, the climate does a lot of the work for you. Here’s a really old Egyptian who died before they’d figured out mummification. The body is remarkably preserved.
Absolutely. If you want to be really well preserved, have yourself buried in a pit of sand with no tomb structure whatsoever. You’ll still be pretty dry and leathery though.