Rethinking the Process of Animal Mummification in Ancient Egypt: Molecular Characterization of Embalming Material and the Use of Brassicaceae Seed Oil in the Mummification of Gazelle Mummies from Kom Mereh, Egypt.

The study of animal mummification in ancient Egypt has recently received increasing attention from a number of modern scholars given the fact that this part of ancient Egyptian funerary and religious history is a practice yet to be fully understood. In this study, nine samples of embalming matter were extracted from six gazelle mummies from the archaeological site of Kom Mereh (modern village of Komir), dated to the Roman period of dominance in ancient Egypt. All samples were analyzed for the presence of inorganic and organic matter applying a multi-analytical approach based on Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Furthermore, in order to identify more specific compounds such as bitumen and beeswax in studied balms, each sample was subjected to a solid phase extraction (SPE) and saponification separation process, respectively. The results of this study revealed that the majority of the analyzed embalming substances sampled from six gazelle mummies from Kom Mereh were complex mixtures of plant oils, animal fats, conifer resin, and beeswax. In this regard, this study was able to report a practice until now unmentioned in the scientific literature, namely, the use of cruciferous oil, derived from seeds of Brassicaceae plants, in animal mummification.

Analysis of balms taken from Egyptian human mummies using solid-phase extraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

The aim of this paper is to establish a protocol by solid-phase extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry leading to a wide and fine qualitative chemical characterization of the several natural substances present in human mummies' balms, using a minimal quantity of samples. In this study, nine samples were analyzed from mummies dating back from the Third Intermediate Period to the Roman Period, and were provided by the Confluences Museum (Lyon, France). Using solid-phase extraction, three fractions were examined in this protocol. The first one, eluted with hexane, concerned chemical families of hydrocarbons of bitumen. The second, eluted with ethanol, enabled terpenic compounds to be characterized and beeswax. The last one, composed of diethyl ether with 2% acetic acid, extracted carboxylic acids with a long aliphatic chain (fatty matter) and glycerides. This study also allowed the characterization of non-saponified compounds from beeswax to be obtained while excluding the common saponification step. The analyzed mummification balms were shown to contain fatty matter, beeswax, bitumen, and diterpenic resinous material. This one-pot solid-phase extraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method was efficient in reducing both the number of analytical steps and the complexity of the archaeological balms subsequently analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Evaluation of a characterization method of Egyptian human mummy balms by chemometric treatments of infrared data.

In the context where lengthy protocols are used to extract and to characterize each substance from mummification balms using techniques such as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, this paper presents the evaluation of the efficiency of an original method to characterize mummification balms using the SIMPLISMA algorithm in infrared spectroscopy. This tool is a pure variable approach corresponding to the selection of calibration variables. This developed approach was combined with chemometric treatment (principal component analysis) to interpret the 47 Fourier Transform Infrared spectra of human mummies' balms from Ancient Egypt. This treatment gave 6 pure spectra and their corresponding extracted concentration profiles. The first pure spectrum corresponded to residual species, and the second to the identification of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, molecules which have a pyrolytic origin. The fourth pure spectrum corresponded to proteins which were characterized, and could be considered as markers of good conservation of individuals. The fifth pure spectrum characterized polysaccharides. Finally, two pure spectra showed the same natural substance, namely fat, which, on the one hand, was unaltered and, on the other hand, was degraded fatty matter. This fast, simple and non-destructive approach allowed the composition of each balm to be studied and their state of conservation/degradation to be characterized. This approach enabled the presence of proteins, polysaccharides and fatty matter or beeswax in different states of conservation/alteration in the studied balms to be characterized.