Death always gets the final word, no matter how it is dressed up or disguised. But now, in a new National Geographic Special, the dead find a voice. They are speaking to scientists around the world through their remains. Flesh, bone, and now, DNA and high technology can bring the dead to life.
“When I look at a mummy, I’m looking at an encyclopedia,” says Bob Brier, an Egyptologist from Long Island University. He and other experts examine mysterious mummies from around the world in a new National Geographic Special, “Mummies: Voices of the Dead,” produced and written by Emmy-winning writer Gail Willumsen. Jill Shinefield is co-producer. Executive producer is Nicolas Noxon. And Sally Kellerman, in her first recording for National Geographic, is the narrator.
Everyone knows a mummy when they see one. Or do they? The ancient Egyptians made their own, but nature can mummify human remains as well. Exposed to warm weather and the elements, a corpse can be reduced to a skeleton in a matter of weeks. Underground, underwater, or under handling by humans, the process can take longer.
Not willing to leave the care of their dead to Mother Nature, the ancient Egyptians drained the bodies of their dead of moisture, anointed them with oils, and wrapped them in linen. Everyone wanted to be mummified. Even animals were mummified to accompany the dead on their final journey. But, as Bob Brier discovered in his own modern journey, “There’s no papyrus that tells exactly how to mummify a human. The Egyptians never wrote down how they did it.” So Brier set out to perform the first Egyptian style mummification in
2,000 years.
“There were quite a few surprises along the way as we did the mummification. One was removing the brain,” recalls Brier of his mummy, which remains, four years after the process was performed, a scientific resource for researchers around the world. “We finally figured out that what the ancient Egyptians did was they inserted the long hook and then moved it around, using it like a whisk.” The brain, by then the consistency of a milk shake, was drained through the nose to preserve the beauty of the intact face.
The Boogie Man. Everyone’s heard of him, but do we know where he came from? The name, anyway, evolved from the bogs of northern Europe, wetlands too wet to walk on and too dry to sail. The ancient Celts believed the bogs were an entrance to the realm of the gods so they frequently threw in tribute of gold and silver, as well as human bodies. Over time the brackish water preserved the skin, turning it into supple leather. Some more than 2,000 years old, these remains frequently show evidence of violent deaths.
The Ice Maiden of Peru meets the Ice Man of the Alps in “Mummies: Voices of the Dead.” In 1991 a warm spell started melting snow in the Southern Alps; two hikers branched off a trail in search of a short cut. What they found stopped them in their tracks and made headlines around the world. Forensic scientists soon discovered that they had found no ordinary natural mummy. The body belonged to a 25-to-40 year-old man with heavily worn teeth, simple blue tattoos on his legs and back, broken ribs and black lungs (from years sitting around a smoky fire). He died around 5,300 years ago and is the oldest frozen mummy ever found.
Fast forward to 1995. American anthropologist Johann Reinhard climbed to about 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) to Mount Ampato in Peru’s Andes Mountains. He was in territory considered sacred by the ancient Inca. He was there, he recalls, “to get some pictures of another volcano that was erupting nearby.” The volcano was causing snow to melt, exposing slopes that had not seen light in perhaps hundreds of years.
Reinhard’s research assistant, Miguel Zarate, spotted something unusual. “I was taking some notes when Miguel continued on. All of a sudden he gave a whistle and pointed,” Reinhard remembers. “I looked and sure enough, it was clear from even forty, fifty feet (12 or 15 meters) away.” The bundle they found was a 12-to-14-year-old girl who had been sacrificed to the gods. Mummified by the cold, her body was intact. Skin, muscles, bone, even the blood in her veins were frozen solid.
She was taken to Johns Hopkins University where a CT scan revealed strong bones and teeth and general good health. And it revealed how she died: a fatal blow to the head.
Ice Age hunters around what is now the town of Cheddar in England used a cave sculpted by an underground river. Some 9,000 years ago these men laid one of their own to rest on the damp earth. Fragments from a tooth belonging to “Cheddar Man” were analyzed by scientists at Oxford University and traces of DNA were extracted. A local high school instructor submitted a sample of his own DNA to see if he was related to “Cheddar man.” The DNA matched exactly. History teacher Adrian Targett now has the oldest documented pedigree in the world, a lineage dating back 9 millennia.
Modern scientific advancements have shed light on some long-standing mysteries and legends surrounding mummies. CT scans, DNA analysis, and other tools of the trade are giving the dead a new voice. In reality mummies are not the terrifying monsters of old. The real deal is a fragile time capsule with much to tell about life in ancient worlds. And now, science has the tools to explore their secrets without destroying them.
Contacts:
Barry Cherin, NBC Press and Publicity
Tel: +1 818 840 3650
Anne Rohinsky, NBC Electronic Publicity
Tel: +1 818 840 3663
Ellen Stanley, National Geographic Television
Tel: +1 202 775 6755
Eileen Campion, Dera & Associates
Tel: +1 212 966 4600
