A German research team has unraveled the mystery of how the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead, using sophisticated science to track the preservative to an extract of the cedar tree.

Chemists from the University of Tobingen and the Munich-based Doerner-Institut replicated an ancient treatment of cedar wood and found it contained a preservative chemical called guaiacol.

“Modern science has finally found the secret of why some mummies can last for thousands of years,” Ulrich Weser of the University of Tobingen.

The team then tested the chemicals found in the cedar derivative on fresh pig ribs. They found it had an extremely high antibacterial effect without damaging body tissue.

The findings will surprise Egyptologists who had thought the embalming oil was extracted from juniper rather than cedar.

The team also tested juniper extracts but found they did not contain the guaiacol preservatives.

Weser said that, despite ancient mentions of “cedar-juice,” scholars believed juniper to be the source because of similar Greek names and some mummies being found clutching juniper berries.

Grave robberies forced the ancient Egyptians, who mummified their dead in the hope they would live eternally, to bury deceased leaders deeper. Decomposition was much quicker, meaning they had to find a preservative as well as salting the bodies.

The team extracted the cedar oil using a method mentioned in a work by Pliny the Elder, a Roman encyclopedist who wrote of an embalming ointment called “cedrium.”

Although there are no contemporary descriptions of how the tar was made, modern Egyptologists had overlooked Pliny’s account, as he was writing centuries later.

The team found their cedar wood tar did contain the key preservative guaiacol.

“We could demonstrate the accuracy of Pliny’s writings with 21st-century science,” Weser said.
Crucial to the team’s research was finding unused embalming material that had been laid down next to the superbly preserved 2,500-year-old mummy of Saankh-kare. This allowed them to carry out chemical analysis of tar unaffected by contact with body tissues.

Report from the University of Tobingen
Authentic descriptions on embalming the deceased in Dynastic Egypt are missing. Limited knowledge emerged in later ancient texts pointing out the use of cedar tree products kedros by Herodotus (1) and cedrium by Pliny the Elder (2).

In tombs of Pharaonic Egypt juniper berries were often found on the bodies of mummies and even in the hand of a female mummy. This tempted Lucas (3) to point out that ‘the ‘cedar oil’ was probably not from the cedar, but often essential oil of junipers extracted from the berries ...’. He even stated earlier that Pliny’s cedrium is mainly a resinous product from juniper trees. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean junipers for all practical purposes were not resin-producing trees. For this very reason no experimental support was available for these statements from comparative studies employing resin and pitch finds from ancient Egyptian tombs with genuine juniper samples.

However, it was claimed that the employed ‘cedar’-tree products were not from Lebanon or Atlas cedar, but from juniper trees. Although never verified by chemical analyses this statement is widely accepted by Egyptologists.

Our investigations show that the oils from juniper trees contain high amounts of cedrol and the tars respectively high amounts of cedrene. Neither cedrol nor cedrene was found in the investigated embalming material. Additionally, the phenolic compounds identified by us belong to an oleaginous tar oil as was stated by Pliny the Elder and not to an extracted oil.

A brown solid resinous embalming material, entombed together with the mummy ‘Saankh-kare’ (18th Dynasty, 1500 B.C., cemetery field #26225, Metropolitan Museum, New York) at Deir el-Bahari, contains sesquiterpenoid components normally detected in organic solvent extracted wood from Cedar atlantica called ‘cedar oil’ which is composed of junipene, cadalene, cadinatriene (calamene), cuparene, a-curcumene etc. Taking into account the former data of the prevalence of guaiacols occurring in coniferous wood tar, there was unequivocal evidence that the resinous material was produced from a cedar tree.

In the ‘Natural History’ by Pliny the Elder (2) the technology of producing such a product is summarized [XVI, 52]: ‘The wood of the tree is chopped up and put into ovens and heated by means of a fire packed all round outside. The first liquid that exudes flows like water down a pipe; in Syria this is called “cedar-juice” [Latin: cedrium], and it is so strong that in Egypt it is used for embalming the bodies of the dead.’ The application of a liquid cedar product is also described by Herodotus (1).

Unfortunately, there is a long tradition of confusion between cedar and juniper trees which also caused misunderstandings about Pliny’s cedrium. In ancient times as well as in today’s terminology juniper trees that are not cedar are also called cedar like the American red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and the Mediterranean ‘little cedar’ (Juniperus oxycedrus).

(1) Herodotus The Histories, A. De Selincourt, Trans. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1954), book II, pp. 160-161.
(2) Pliny (the Elder) Natural History, H. Rackham, Trans. (Heinemann, London, 1960) vol. IV, libri XII-XVI.
(3) Lucas, J. Egypt. Archaeol. XVII, 13 (1931).

Tag: Secret of Mummy Preservation