On my last visit to the Boston MFA, I saw quite a few (unwrapped) egyptian mummys. They really don’t look too good-really shrunken and darkened. On the other hand, I hear that modern methods are quite a bit better (see Lenin -he seems to look pretty good, after 76 years). Is it possible to preserve a body indefinitely? What techniques are used?
I seem to remember seeing a German using polymers for corpse preservation on a recent special. Try www.discovery.com they aired the piece.
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
Well, I guess we can determine the answer to this one in about 3500 years; we’ll see how Lenin looks then.
With all the preservatives we eat, it’s amazing that anyone deteriorates.
National Geographic ran a show on a modern paleontologist, DR. Bob Brier, who wanted to try to duplicate the Egyptian practice. He got the help of a surgeon and the Cairo Museum (along with a body donated to science) and followed the old Egyptian papyri or wall paintings for instructions.
At the end of the 90 or 120 day process, his mummy looked just abour like the 2,800 year old bodies that they recover in archaeological digs. He pointed this out and noted that the removal of moisture to prevent decay is one of the key aspects of mummification and that they are supposed to look all shrivelled up.
Tom~