Mummy tastes terrible, why would Europeans want to eat it?

Mania from mummies

The belief that mummies can cure disease has led people for centuries to eat food that tastes terrible.

Mumia is a product created from a mummy. It was a medicine consumed for centuries by the rich and the poor, available in drugstores, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Ai's tombs. Egypt back to Europe.

In the 12th century, apothecaries used pre-ground mummies for their otherworldly healing properties. Mummy was a prescribed medicine for the next 500 years.

In a world without antibiotics, doctors prescribe skulls, bones, and flesh to treat headaches to reduce swelling or cure plagues.

Mummy is a prescription drug.

However, not everyone is convinced by this belief. Guy de la Fontaine, a royal physician, suspected mummies to be a useful medicine and saw fake mummies made from farmers who died in Alexandria in 1564. He realized that people could cheated. They did not always consume genuine ancient mummies.

But the smithies illustrated an important point: there was a constant demand for dead human flesh used in medicine, and the supply of real Egyptian mummies could not meet this.

Apothecaries and herbalists were still distributing medicine to mummies in the 18th century.

Mummy potion

Not all doctors consider old, dry mummies to be the best medicine. Some doctors believed that fresh flesh and blood had a vitality that the dead had long lacked.

The mummy meat was convinced that it was the best, even the noblest of the nobles. King Charles II of England took medicine made from human skulls after suffering from epilepsy, and until 1909, doctors used to often use human skulls to treat neurological conditions.

To the royal and social classes, eating mummies seemed to be an appropriate medicine for the royal family, as the doctors claimed, mummy was created from the pharaohs.

Dinner, drinks and a show

By the 19th century, mummies were no longer used for healing but Victorians held 'unwrapped parties', where Egyptian mummies would not be wrapped for the entertainment of private parties .

Napoleon's first expedition into Egypt in 1798 piqued European curiosity and allowed 19th-century visitors to Egypt to bring the entire mummy back to Europe.

Victorians held private parties dedicated to opening the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Initial unpacking events at least show signs of medical respect. In 1834, surgeon Thomas Pettigrew unwrapped the mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. In his day, autopsies were public and the opening of another public health event.

Before long, even the pretense of medical research was lost. Because now the mummy is no longer a medicine but a thrill.

The thrill of seeing the bones and dried flesh appear when the bandages were removed was once a show of entertainment.

Modern mummies

In 2016, Egyptologist John J. Johnston held the first public unpacking of a mummy since 1908. Part art, part science and part show, Johnston created a immersive re-enactment of what it was like to be present in a Victorian mummy unpacking session.

Today, the black market antiquities smuggling market - including mummies - is worth about US$3 billion

No serious archaeologist would unwrap a mummy and no doctor would suggest eating a mummy. But the allure of mummies remains strong. They're still sold, they're still mined, and they're still commodities.