Most archaeologists dig. Layer by layer. Dirt, then dirt again. Then charred seeds, broken bone fragments, and tiny grains of pollen. It’s careful, quiet work. Followed by months in the lab. But then you have the other guys. The ones who build things. The experimentalists.
Sam Kean talks about these folks in his new book Dinner with King Tut. He’s chasing lost smells. Lost tastes. Ancient hair tricks.
He also talks about mummies. Not just digging them up. Making one.
Cultures have always wrapped their dead. The Egyptians did it best. They left zero instruction manuals on how. So modern scientists had to guess. Mostly they use animals. A pig. A goat. Bob Brier and Ronn Wade? They wanted human tissue. In 1994 they found one.
Wade wanted to be a mortician. Like his dad. After Vietnam he studied anatomy. Then he ran Maryland’s state anatomy board. Brier was different. An Egyptologist. A hoarder of books on ancient Egypt. So much he needed a second apartment. They picked a donor. Seventy-six. White male. Died of a heart attack in Baltimore. They called him E.M. Balm. Because it was funny. Or rude. Maybe both.
The Brain Milkshake
They set the stage. Pharaonic tools. Linen. A wide wooden table. Copper blades. They ditched the copper immediately. Dull. Obsidian cut fine.
First test. The brain.
Brier knew embalmers stuck a hook up the nose. Pulled the brains out. The problem? The reference texts were vague. Details were missing. Wade and Brier tried the scoop. The tissue was soup. It just smeared. They got desperate. Squirted water up the nose. Used the rod to whisk it into slush. It poured out.
“Like a milkshake,” Brier said. Strawberry.
That settled the method.
May 1994 arrived. They started.
Organs had rules. The brain was trash. The heart was sacred. They left the heart inside. The rest went. They cut a three-and-a-half inch hole in the abdomen. Liver. Lungs. Spleen. Gallbladder. Twenty-two feet of intestines.
Getting the liver and lungs out took geometry. And squeezing. Detaching the lungs from the heart, blind, in a tiny hole? Hardest part.
They washed the cavity. Palm wine. Myrrh. Frankincense stuffed in the skull. Ritual stuff. But also practical. It kills microbes. Hides the rot smell. Ancient embalmers imported expensive junk too. Pistachio resin. Beeswax. Castor oil. Ramses had Indian peppercorns shoved up his nostrils.
Salt and Sweat
Then came the drying.
Natron. Natural mineral. Salt. Baking soda. Found in dry Egyptian wadis. It sucks water. Turns flesh to jerky. No bacteria survive that.
Brier actually dug his natron in Egypt. Hauling hundreds of pounds of white powder into JFK customs? Tricky. He hid it in the film crew’s gear.
They packed the body. Bowls for the organs. Two hundred eleven pounds of natron under the corpse. Fifty-eight pounds inside the chest cavity. Hundreds more dumped on top. They turned Wade’s old office into a desert. Heater set to 104 F. Dehumidifiers humming all night.
Five weeks later. The salt turned brown. Crusty. Absorbing blood. Bodily juices. They had to crack it with an iron rod.
Did it stink? Brier remembers it as sharp. Not terrible. Wade says they wore masks. Reports say different things. Doesn’t matter. Brier loved what he saw.
The skin shriveled. Lips pulled back to show teeth. The face tightened. Brown-yellow hue appeared. Brier always argued about this. Was that the mummy look? Or was it thousands of years of desert sun? He looked at their guy after five weeks. Leathery skin. Beaky nose. Hair sticking up in wisps.
It wasn’t time. It was the embalming. “He looked just like Ramses the Great,” he said.
The dehydration changed everything else too. Limbs went rigid. Tree branches. The body dropped from 188 to 79 pounds. The organs withered too. This solved an old puzzle. Canopic jars. Thin necks. How did you shove a liver in? You can’t. Unless natron shrinks it down small enough. Then it slides right in.
Wrapping the Dead
Next came the massage. Lotus oil. Cedar. Palm oil. Made the stiff joints pliable again. Easier to handle.
Then the linen.
They wrapped fingers individually. Then limbs. Torso. They even wrapped the penis. If it shriveled too much, they tied on a codpiece of stiff fabric. Nothing embarrassing for the gods.
Three months more. Arid heat. The weight dropped again. To 51 pounds. They added more layers. Magic amulets between the linen. Papyrus spells. Standard procedure.
Today? The mummy sits in Maryland. Metal casket. Room temperature. Three decades gone.
Brier and Wade opened it once or twice. Checking for rot. Found nothing.
“He’s dead and well,” Brier says.
And there he sits. Waiting for us to figure out why we did it. Again.
