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Did they use mummies for fuel in trains?
“During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as locomotive fuel.” the Wogs to Western Ways, and Make Them Pay. spewed them forth, plentiful as passenger pigeons, common as the cod that clogged Atlantic seas.
What was mummy powder used for?
Mummy, often sold as “mummia” (a confusing word that also refers to the bitumen with which mummies were embalmed), was applied to the skin or powdered and mixed into drinks as a treatment for bruising and other ailments.
How did the British eat mummies?
Tinctures were made to treat internal bleeding by soaking mummified bodies in alcohol or vinegar. Powdered skull was used to treat ailments of the head, and was even sometimes mixed with chocolate to treat apoplexy. In the 1800s, Englishmen treated epilepsy by mixing skull with molasses.
Did archaeologists eat mummies?
Since the 12th century, Europeans had been eating Egyptian mummies as medicine. In later centuries unmummified corpses were passed off as mummy medicine, and eventually some Europeans no longer cared whether the bodies they were ingesting had been mummified or not.
How many human mummies have been found in Egypt?
A cemetery containing more than a million mummified human bodies has been unearthed in central Egypt, according to archaeologists. Scientists have already excavated more than 1,700 mummies, preserved by the hot dry desert in the Faiyum region of Egypt about 60 miles (96km) south of Cairo.
Why did the British eat mummies?
What happened to the ancient Egyptian mummies?
Over the past few thousands of years, many of the Egyptian mummies have been destroyed in interesting ways. Some were burned for fuel, some were ground into powder to make magical potions, and some were destroyed by treasure hunters.
Were mummies really burned for railroad fuel?
By the way, a related story that mummies were burned for railroad fuel is almost certainly a joke dreamed up by Mark Twain.
Why are Egyptian mummies not burned in the boilers?
In the 19th century Egyptian mummies were not burned in the boilers… The venerable mummies have survived hundreds, even thousands, of years, keeping the memory of their original dwellers, whether human beings or animals, in the hope of a new world on the other side of death.
What did Twain say about Egyptian railroad companies using mummies for fuel?
In The Innocents Abroad, Twain described Egyptian railroad companies using fuel “composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose,” and reported that “sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, ‘D—n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King!’” 6.