Ancient Egyptian jars hint at complex mummification balms

­­Jars holding the innards of an historic Egyptian noblewoman from roughly 3,500 years in the past comprise hints of one of the crucial complicated mummification balms of that period, a brand new research reveals.

About 120 years in the past, the stays of a girl named Senetnay had been discovered entombed amongst pharaohs and esteemed nobles in Egypt’s Valley of Kings. Such an honored burial was uncommon. Inscriptions on vessels within the tomb point out she not solely was a moist nurse to the pharaoh Amenhotep II, but additionally remarkably near him.

An evaluation of the jars that held her stays appear to substantiate her significance and trace on the extent of historic commerce routes and the intricacies of mummification practices, researchers report August 31 in Scientific Stories. 

In historic Egyptian mummification, the viscera could be faraway from the physique and positioned in separate jars together with a balm meant to protect the organs. To seek out out precisely how Senetnay’s innards had been preserved, archaeological chemist Barbara Huber and colleagues carried out a panel of chemical analyses of the residue within the jars that when held her lungs and liver (SN: 2/1/23).

Whereas most different embalming fluids from her period contained easier mixes of fat, oils and sap, Senetnay’s stays had been preserved in a wealthy mix of gear, the crew discovered. The residue hinted at oils, fat, beeswax, tree resins, the tarlike bitumen and, in a potential first, the sap from larch bushes, which grew within the mountains within the Mediterranean.

“We had been fortunate as a result of we recognized one of many richest, most complicated mummification balms ever discovered … particularly for this early time interval,” says Huber, of the Max Plank Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.

A number of the components could have come as far-off as Southeast Asia, the crew suggests. This hints that Egyptians could have had sure far-reaching commerce routes as much as a millennium sooner than beforehand thought.

The far-flung and numerous components, Huber says, suggest that little expense was spared in Senetnay’s preservation, reinforcing her standing as a valued member of the pharaoh’s entourage.