![]() The process of turning a recently deceased human being into a persuasive facsimile of an ancient Egyptian mummy was an unpleasant one. A distinction was then drawn between primary or true mumiya and secondary or false mumiya. As Guy de La Fontaine complained in 1564, after his journey to Alexandria to acquire the drug, the problem was that in many instances the mummies were modern corpses treated to resemble ancient mummies. It was not always easy to acquire a mummy, so less scrupulous Eastern merchants decided to make their own. When ground to a powder, those preserved bodies and their resins, oils, and aromatic substances not only had the same consistency and colour as original Persian mumiya but also smelled better. Naturally occurring bitumen was rare, so enterprising merchants went hunting in Egyptian tombs for alternative supplies. That is best which is black, ill-smelling, shiny, and massive.” Dark tradeĮurope began to link mummies with medicine in the 15th century, in response to a robust demand for medical mumiya. An 11th-century physician, Constantinus Africanus, wrote that mumiya “is a spice found in the sepulchers of the dead. According to Pliny, it could heal wounds and a range of maladies.Įuropean scholars in the Middle Ages associated bitumen with a blackish substance found in the tombs of Egypt. Dioscorides described one form as a liquid from Apollonia (modern Albania) known, in Persian, as mumiya. Galen, wrote about its healing properties. writers Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides, as well as the second-century A.D. ![]() Black, sticky, and viscous, bitumen is a form of petroleum found in areas around the Dead Sea.
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