The Worst Mummy Job in Ancient Egypt: Make the Cut, Then Run 🏃 #shorts

In ancient Egypt, the embalmer who made the first cut had to run. The Greek writer Diodorus of Sicily, who visited Egypt, wrote that a scribe marked the body's left side, the cutter made the cut with a stone blade, and then the others there chased him off, throwing stones and cursing, because harming a body was a terrible thing.

First, the family picked a price: a talent of silver, roughly 26 kilos, for the best, and "very little" for the cheapest. Drying under natron salt took about forty days, and the whole job seventy. Labelled embalmers' pots from Saqqara include one "to make his smell pleasant". And the other embalmers? Honoured, free to walk into the temples like priests.

Sources: Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.83 and 1.91 (trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb, 1933); Herodotus, Histories 2.86; Australian Museum, "How were ancient Egyptians mummified?"; M. Rageot, R. B. Hussein et al., Nature 614 (2023).

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