The Potential Origin of Mummification | Lost Treasures of Egypt

In the desert of Gabileen, just south of Luxor, Meredith searches for evidence of Egypt's earliest death rites. She believes the myths that drove Egyptians to mummify their own bodies had roots much earlier than ancient Egyptian civilization. Prehistoric rock art depicting wildlife suggests this area was once a sacred place.

In the 19th century, archaeologists identified it as a burial ground. This is a desolate, dry landscape; nothing much to see on the surface, but underneath these rocks and sand, there would have been prehistoric tombs. In 1896, an Egyptologist from the British Museum received a tip-off of a momentous discovery buried under a thin layer of desert debris. Local farmers had found a mummified body preserved in astonishing detail.

On the upper arm, tattoos of horned animals were still visible, and from the head sprouted tufts of red hair, earning this mummy its original nickname, Ginger. There was a puncture wound to the left shoulder blade and a fractured rib beneath. Forensic analysis has revealed the body is male and over 5,000 years old. But how is this body so perfectly preserved?

For Meredith, the evidence suggests the man's mummification was not planned; instead, it was an accident of nature. "In this photo, I can see there's no bandages or anything that would have preserved this mummy, so it would seem that this was not an intentional mummification. He was preserved by the sand. There was no ritual or magic or anything involved—just the drying power of nature."

Hundreds of years before the first Pharaoh, this man lived around the fertile floodplains along the River Nile. But around his 20th birthday, he was brutally stabbed in the back and left for dead. He was buried in a shallow grave with simple clay grave goods and covered with sand. But the desert sun and hot dry sand quickly evaporated all the water from his body, stopping it from decomposing, freezing him in time until his discovery 5,400 years later.

Archaeologists have found no papyri that explained the historical origins of mummification, but Meredith believes the practice could have evolved from accidents of nature. Natural mummies like the Gabilee man would have inspired ancient Egyptians that if they could use technology to harness the power of nature, their bodies too could last forever into eternity. It's a truly spectacular discovery; it tells us where mummification started.