Mummia

This is in the National Geographic, but we'll put that link up in the show notes as well, right? Apparently it begins with this mistranslation and misunderstanding.

Mumia is the key word in this.

Mumia is prized for its healing qualities.

It's a substance.

It's like kind of pitch, basically.

For one of the most famous human medicines in European history, apothecaries would have to look considerably further afield to the tombs of ancient Egypt.

when an ancient egyptian traveled up to the proverbial pyramid in the sky but they never dreamed that one day their remains would be dug up shipped thousands of miles away and used as medicine on the grimy streets of london but that's exactly what started happening in the 12th century and yet it all began with a linguistic and medical model surrounding a substance known as mumia though the origins of the word complicated Before Europeans were grinding up Egyptian corpses, mumia was associated with a naturally occurring black tar-like substance, essentially a form of pitch or bitumen.

It had been used medicinally in parts of the Middle East and was recommended for various injuries and illnesses.

Gradually, knowledge of this exotic cure reached Europe through Arabic medical writings and their Latin translations.

Bituminous substances were also associated with Egyptian mummification, and over the centuries of translation and repetition, the meaning of Mumia began to shift.

In medieval European medicine, the Arabic Mumia became the Latin Mumia.

slowly the distinction became blurred and mumia could refer to the medicinal substance itself but also to the material supposedly found inside an embalmed egyptian body fast forward a little further and eventually it could refer directly to the preserved body And that, dear viewer, is how Europeans started grinding up mummy corpses for medicine.

Of course, it wasn't a mere mistranslation.

It wasn't a rare thing at all.

Mummia is this mashed up bit of mummies that you then eat.

um then when it got to like the 1800s they were like taking mummies out of egypt and holding parties where they all unwrapped them and then in the 1900s we're putting them in museums there's tutankhamun and all of this and now here we are in the 2000s and we're talking about maybe we should not be doing that either it's all just part of a multi-centuries long conversation on whether what we should do with the mummies and i don't think we're at the end of it yet

Thank you for that,