Well, here’s an odd little question…for those of you knowledgeable about the ancient Egyptian technique of mummification-Natron, 70 days, canopic jars, all that-if you left the brain in the body, rather than extracting it through the erk nose, could the body still be successfully mummified, or would the extra tissue harbor enough bacteria to “spoil” the rest of the body?
And no, Mods, I’m not planning on trying this out on anyone.
Well, thanks for your time,
Ranchoth
The brain has a lot of moisture in it and that’s a big no-no if you want to preserve something.
Hmmm…do you suppose one could open up an “access point” to the brain, through the nose for instance, and use something, such as a length of cloth, or even just more natron, as a"wick" to draw out the moisture from the brain during the normal drying process?
The problem is, the brain is solid, and thus has moisture pretty much all the way though… so unless you drilled a pretty thorough hole into the gray matter, it would just dry up the surface.
Well, they used to leave the heart in the mummy with no problems. The brain being mostly water would dry up any way while the body was lying around in salt for weeks.
There are lots of other steps involved in making a mummy. Lynn University in my current home of Boca Raton, FL used to teach a class where they would actually mummy-up a body. Don’t know if they still offer that, though. They specialize in mortuary art. It had something of a scandal recently when somehow a Jewish womans’ body found its way into their supply of corpses for the students to embalm. That’s a big no-no for those of the Jewish faith. I met a cute chick in a bar last year who was studying mortuary arts at Lynn. By coincidence, she started dating a guy I used to work with before I got laid off. Hey, have I got far enough off the subject yet?