Making Mummies - HISTORY

How were mummies made? Scientists weigh in on a surprisingly complex process.

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For years, scientists have been trying to figure out how Egyptians mummified their dead. Secrets of the trade were passed down from father to son, allowing the process to remain a closely guarded secret.

Trepanation was a process seen in Peruvian mummies in which an ancient witch doctor cut out a portion of the human skull.

A step by step process of how a body was prepared for mummification. The brain was removed along with all other major organs except the heart.

When Bram Stoker wrote "Jewel of Seven Stars" in the early 1900s, he described an ancient Egyptian mummy who comes to life and slaughters everyone in sight. His writing sparked mummy madness among the Victorians.

The Chin Choi, a fishing community south of Peru, wrapped their dead 1,500 years before the earliest Egyptian mummies.

Nobody knows when mummy unwrapping parties first started, but royalty used to throw them quite often. Although mummy unwrapping ultimately went out of fashion, mummies never have.

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