The original excavation of Late Neolithic graves at Mostagedda, Egypt, in the 1930s.
Funerary wrappings from a Late Neolithic cemetery in Upper Egypt reveal mummification techniques that are 1,500 years older than other known examples. Until now, the earliest evidence for embalming comes from a few isolated cases during the late Old Kingdom in about 2200 BC, a practice that really took off during the Middle Kingdom (c.2000-1600 BC). Before this, mummification was attributed to the natural environmental conditions of hot, arid deserts. But research by Dr Jana Jones, of Macquarie University, Sydney, along with Dr Stephen Buckley, at the University of York, and Prof. Thomas Higham of Oxford University has revealed evidence of deliberate mummification of the dead at the one of the earliest known Egyptian cemeteries at Mostagedda, in the Badari region of Egypt.
This Late Neolithic site was excavated in the 1930s, and its finds stored in museums in the UK. Detailed scientific analysis of the funerary wrappings using a combination of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and thermal desorption/pyrolysis revealed traces of embalming substances made of the same mix of ingredients as detailed in recipes used at the height of the Pharaonic era about 3,000 years later.
Dr Jones told CWA: ‘I had anticipated finding a single resin; but resin was just one component of the mixtures, which was the surprising discovery.’ ‘The antibacterial properties of some of these ingredients – which included pine resin, plant sugar, and animal fats – and the localised soft-tissue preservation that they would have afforded, lead us to conclude that these represent the very beginnings of mummification practice,’ Dr Buckley explained.