The mystery of the mummies

About 50 km north of the center of the capital city of the Republic of Ukraine, there is a famous tomb with hundreds of mummies but strange because the mummies are preserved in a very simple condition of natural, not in the Pyramids.

The mystery has no answer to the mummies

Next to the ferocious river is a high mountain range. The old people dug into the ground of wide and sprinkled tunnels that stretched along the mountainside. A short distance away, the upper part of the tunnel is carved into a deep square, fitting a coffin and that is the resting place of the deceased. Called a coffin, but there is no celestial board, but only a frame and a pyramid of penguin or domed rectangle that can be seen very clearly by the deceased person. Sometimes, the coffin with a log carved out of the concave and grid placed directly on top, looks like a 'bed'.

Mummies at the Egyptian Museum.(Photo: 2travel2egypt)

All the 'beds ' here are beautifully decorated. Feeling cool in the grave house . All of the corpses here are covered with a dry, dark brown color. Strange is not even a little smell of death, even the mildew smell is not there. The children who had left school on the way across the grave often threw away their school bags on the ground and ran down to the house to play the chase game as if this was a play place for them. Occasionally there are people who visit the deceased as their ancestors .

It is found that in the Egyptian Pyramid there are strange phenomena. For example, in a tower of metal coins that had leaked, more than a month later, it lit up like a new one. Freshly squeezed fresh milk from a cow if left outside the tower is damaged, it is still left in the flavor tower normally with the same time. Fresh fruits and vegetables in the tower for about 15 days are still fresh, not withered. The two tomatoes planted at the same time, the plants in the tower bloomed in front of the outdoor plants .

But it is the atmosphere inside the Pyramid, the great architecture in terms of culture, money, human power, wisdom, time of construction as well as existence and is particularly thought to absorb 'waves'. certain 'universe through doors and vents towards the North, creating an environment that can preserve the bodies of Pharaohs for thousands of years. But here is clearly not the Pyramid, but just a tomb that was dug in the ground very rustic, but the bodies here have existed for thousands of years .

What makes the corpses survive with time ? Do mummification? Do the environment preserve the body? Or because of both? Those are the big questions that after many decades of searching, there is still no exact answer. Currently, there are many different ways of embalming and although it is acknowledged that pioneering in this field in particular and medicine in general are ancient Egyptians.

Many medical achievements on papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians knew quite well about the human body. They attach great importance to the worship of the dead because of the death of the soul. In every human being there is a silhouette like me when looking at a mirror called a soul (ka), when the soul comes into the body, when the soul leaves the body but still exists. The soul only dies when the body is destroyed. If the body is intact, then at some point the soul will enter into the body and people will rise again. This belief is expressed in the myth of Orisis (the Spirit of the Nile) and God Seth (Desert).

The art of embalming was born like that and is believed to have appeared since the Ancient Kingdom (about 3000 - 2200 BC). The professional mummifieder uses a hook to pass through the nasal route to the head to remove all the brain, then wash the skull cavity with a decoction of many aromatic plants and alcohol . The chest and abdomen are operated with a sharp stone knife to With all the organs removed, only the heart remains in the chest because the heart is considered to be an intelligent and affectionate place of birth, so it must be kept for the final judgment.

The chest cavity, belly is also filled with flavored water and alcohol and sewn. The body is soaked in salt water for about 70 days, so it shrinks to only skin and bones. Then rubbed with aromatherapy and a special solution, then tightened with cloth, sometimes the chest and abdomen are stuffed with aromatherapy saws (again, the researcher said, after handling the brain and viscera , the body was buried or placed in a cave without wind for about 70 days, then bundled with tarred cloth. The fingers are inserted into gold bags to prevent them from falling. The head of the coffin (in stone) people carved the face of the deceased person, the body of the coffin touched the figure of the clothes to make it easier to recognize the body, so looking at the coffin with the figure of no limbs, next to the grave was erected statue of dead people in stone or wood.

Mummy of a Pharaoh.(Photo: crystalinks)

Early life, embalming is an impregnable ritual of the King and Queen . From about 1500 BC, aristocrats were allowed to use this ritual. Then this spread to the wealthy and to the popular class. However, this process also distinguishes caste: The King used the most complex marquee technique, after the nobility and the rich, of course paying a large sum of money, and the average class did not pay The money but the technique is simply marinated with an alkaline solution, and a lime layer is applied outside.

In 1996, near the El Bawiti region discovered about 10,000 mummies dating back 300 years BC to 300 AD. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is currently displaying 26 Pharaoh mummies about 4,000 - 5,000 years from us but the condition of the bodies is still very good. Recently, Japanese archaeologists unearthed an intact mummy in an undamaged grave in South Africa, Egypt. Mr. Sakugi Yosimura, a leading researcher at the University of Oaxea, Tokyo, said the body of the man was marinated before the Pharaoh Tulankhamen dynasty (c. 1336 - 1327 BC).

Do Ukrainians and Europeans have their own mummified ways or learn from Egypt? This question still has no satisfactory answer. But people are inclined to the second hypothesis by the Ancient, the Eastern and the Western, with two brilliant civilizations having exchanges. The Phenixi (present-day Lebanon) went back and forth to trade throughout the Mediterranean since the 11th century BC; to the 6th century BC.

Ancient Pythagorean scientists, Talet traveled to Egypt, Mesopotamia; V century BC Greek historian Herodot traveled many places in the East. At the end of the IV century BC, Alexandre Makedonia conquered the East (to the northwest of India) called the Hellenistic period (334 - 30 BC) and formed the Greekized countries including Egypt. Sometimes Egypt is just a Roman province.

In the Middle Ages, Europe recession should be more outdated than the East in all aspects. The Arab state established in the 7th century, to the eighth century became a vast empire stretching across three Asian, European and African countries from the Indus basin to Spain and a bridge between Indian civilizations India, China, Western Europe, so the study, mutual exchange of scientific achievements, including the way of embalming is an inevitable. Due to the movement of the Roman Pope, from the 11th century to the 13th century, Western European countries had 8 Eastern expeditions by knights in the form of crosses. Crusades are another bridge for East-West civilization.

However, in the old Russia , there was a completely different embalming method from the traditional method of the scientist, Dr. Vyvodxev invented the use of chemicals, which are Glycerin, Phenic, alcohol and camphor substances. .

So far, this method has only discovered one mummy is the world-famous Russian surgeon NIPirogov. The mummy's surgery was over 124 years old and was only preserved in the crypt of a small church on the outskirts of Vinxina, although his face and hands were exposed in the air but the colors were almost unchanged. .

What is special about Pirogov's organs still in the body? However, it is currently unknown how much of the ingredients Dr. Vyvodxev has prepared into the embalming solution and how to deal with it and the ways to protect the body he used.

In Vietnam , many people know of two statues of bordering statues in Dau Pagoda , Thuong Tin, Ha Tay, which are mummies in normal air environment which are subject to frequent and long-term effects of temperature and humidity. air, which means the most difficult storage conditions. These mummy statues like this can be seen in Tibet, Japan, and Vietnam are often the remains of monks and nuns .

In 2005, when excavating in the Nhat Tan peach field, Hanoi had ordered a dried mummy but still intact after 10 days of exposure under the influence of sun and rain. Although the celestial plate was destroyed, the water entered the coffin, but the mummies about 200 years ago were still dry, intact with both organs and hair; Clothes, blankets, cloth inserts still retain white. Especially from these shrouds that fly off a fragrance and remain for a long time. Vietnamese archaeologists have compiled records of 75 mummy graves but have not yet been able to excavate them. They claim that the embalming method commonly used in China and Vietnam is the method of soaking the body in the embalming solution and also in anaerobic environment (without air).

Excavated mummies in Nhat Tan (Hanoi) after 10 days of exposure, the water remains intact.(Photo: CAND)

The core of this marinating method is to make the body a sterile environment . When a person is embalmed to death, he will take an antidote (mainly cinnamon) to reduce his body temperature for a while after dying and limit intestinal bacteria. When you stop breathing, pour about one liter of strong sticky alcohol into your mouth to disinfect your digestive tract. It is thought that alcohol works to keep body tissue from decomposing. The deceased were bathed with five-flavored water to kill bacteria on the skin, then dressed in aromatherapy clothes, shrouded by many layers of silk to avoid the impact of air and enter the body very quickly. The coat must be fully sealed and painted in the outside so that the amount of air in the jacket is the lowest. In the tomb of the tomb of Nhat Tan, there was a dark blue-green fluid that was supposed to be a marinated solution. This way of embalming often uses essential oils that are now known to be pine oil, eucalyptus, eucalyptus, and aromatic retention substances for a long time. The above findings confirmed that the ancient Vietnamese had mastered the perfect and delicate embalming techniques. Only regret is that scientists have not found evidence of the origin and secret of Vietnamese embalming art.

Natural mummies under the forensic perspective

In the city of Guanajuato, Mexico has a graveyard holding 117 embalmed corpses, the deadest body we have been around for 140 years. These corpses were never marinated but buried normally. But because the climate here is very dry and there is a lot of minerals in the soil, the corpse does not decompose but shrank and very solid. People take this place to bury those who do not want to return to ' dust' . This phenomenon can be fully explained that due to the hot and dry climate, the soil has many minerals that the environment cannot operate. So the body did not decompose but gradually dried up again.

A mummy in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico.(Photo: rayjeanne)

The forensics call these cases to be statistic (momification). However, in the tropical monsoon climate, high temperature and humidity like Vietnam still has many corpses after 3 years of normal or longer burial still intact software that people often call the grave. and this phenomenon is attributed to improper meanings according to your superstitious notions.

When the dead are buried in the old traditional methods, if the temperature, the environment is favorable, the bacteria are available in the body, in the soil will multiply very fast and the body's body is the source of physical nutrition. Thought for them to grow. Where a lot of water is buried, the software quickly dissolves. However, if the burial site has many sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, sulfate ions . in addition to having an antiseptic effect in the soil, these ions penetrate the body and bind to glycerin and acid. Fat decomposing from fat to soap is called saponification.

Most corpses have this phenomenon but because soap is low, not enough to prevent bacterial decomposition, only the hardware remains. A handful of saponified bodies are so powerful that the body becomes an effective antiseptic environment. The skin is yellow, hard, hard to cut, unpleasant odor. The role of software decomposition is essential and only the bacteria do not make sense. So after three years of changing clothes for the dead, it is still intact.

Similarly, in limestone mountains there is a phenomenon of petrification which is primarily calcium and sulfate ions. If buried in a high, dry and hot place, it will decompose very slowly . The forensic examiner sees the value of preserving the injuries and pathologies in these forms to calculate and help to help Investigation? People explain the phenomenon with their superstitious notions!