
Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’ - diodorus
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/ancient-egyptian-coffins-and-mystery-of-black-goo/
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exDM69
I guessed quite a few of these ingredients because I work with beeswax, tree
resins and plant oils in the wood shop, particularly when doing instruments.

I was surprised about the bitumen and its origin story (floating blobs in the
dead sea). That stuff looks like bitumen but I did not expect that they had
petroleum products so long ago.

I use lots of materials in my craft that were once used by the ancient
Egyptians. Beeswax, linseed oil, hide glue, propolis were all used for at
least 4000 years successfully. It breaks my heart to know that we abandoned
these traditional materials less than a hundred years ago and replaced it with
plastic crap, which seems unlikely to stand the test of time.

~~~
ginko
> I was surprised about the bitumen and its origin story

Interesting, bitumen was the first (and only) thing I thought of.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
Indeed - I believe people in the middle ages burnt mummies as fuel because of
their bitumen content

~~~
michaelsbradley
[https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2341/do-
egyptians-...](https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2341/do-egyptians-
burn-mummies-as-fuel/)

------
sradman
The black goo is bitumen, or tar. It is the binder used in road asphalt and
was a common pitch used to seal boat hulls. The article focuses on the
ritualistic aspect but doesn’t focus on the functional reasons. Sealing the
mummified remains from the elements, sealing in the gasses and smells from
mummification/decomposition, and gluing the sarcophagus seem like reasonable
functional explanations.

Some statues are also covered with pitch so maybe it was also used as a theft
deterrent. The pitch covered statues are the best evidence that the pitch was
ritualistic rather than functional, in my opinion.

~~~
romaaeterna
Indoor or outdoor statues? Stone eventually suffers from the elements if it
left outside.

~~~
duskwuff
Indoor, I guess? These statues were found in tombs -- they weren't made to be
displayed.

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ConsiderCrying
I love the clash of deeply detailed language like "we vaporized the samples
and used ‘Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS)’ and separated the
molecules" with them using 'black goo' as a term.

I am fascinated that the goo wasn't just a random choice for mummification but
apparently had spiritual/cultural significance. Never knew too much about
Egyptian culture but this being a sort of 'regeneration' symbol, perhaps tied
into some sort of afterlife beliefs, that's amazing.

~~~
Digit-Al
> I love the clash of deeply detailed language like "we vaporized the samples
> and used ‘Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS)’ and separated the
> molecules" with them using 'black goo' as a term.

I would argue that 'black goo' is the most deeply detailed and technical term
that could be used for such a substance. I think we can both agree that one
cannot argue that it is not black. Now read the following definition of goo:

Noun. Any semi-solid or liquid substance; especially one that is sticky, gummy
or slippery; frequently of vague or unknown composition, or a bodily fluid.

Can you think of any more precise and technical term for such a substance? :-)

~~~
Intermernet
Not precise or technical, but from an evocative perspective, I like the term
"Necroplasm".

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olah_1
> it appears that the goo was a ritually important anointing fluid used for a
> range of purposes, all relating to the burial of the deceased and their
> transformation into Osiris.

It's worth noting that the color black signifies manifestation in Hermetic
thought. The "first stuff" upon which everything is made. Think of statues of
the Black Virgin (Mary, and before that Isis).

Blackness signifies how we should be if we want to be alchemically changed
into a higher state. Open palms, receptive, like a mirror reflecting divinity.

Super interesting topic imo.

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INTPenis
Some records suggest that people in Azerbaijan were taking crude oil baths as
early as 6th century.

I can't say what's true but it seems to make sense that people were fascinated
by a liquid pouring from the ground. Just like when plutonium was first
discovered it was used for health.

~~~
lgl
> Just like when plutonium was first discovered it was used for health

[citation needed] because this doesn't really seem to be the case. Although
apparently there were eventually some plutonium based pacemakers in the 70s,
plutonium itself was first produced in the 40s but I couldn't really find how
it was used for health except for some highly unethical studies done on
radiation.

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teruakohatu
The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must
have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when
grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I don't doubt that there's been scientific research into the best way to
mummify a body; they wouldn't have done all of the steps on a whim / guess.
But we're talking about a tradition spanning hundreds, if not thousands of
years here. Mummification or otherwise preserving a body goes back a long time
- the oldest form of intentional mummification goes back to 5000 BC, or 7000
years ago (according to wikipedia), so even then they had developed a
tradition and the knowledge of preserving a body already.

~~~
throwaway2048
To put things in perspective we are closer time-wise to Alexander the Great's
conquest of Egypt than he was to the building of the Great Pyramids. Ancient
Egyptian culture was immensely old, even at that time, and was basically
continuous for the whole period.

~~~
phonypc
The figure I usually see used for that comparison is Julius Caesar or
Cleopatra. I think Alexander is a little too old for it to be quite true.

~~~
jbay808
I remember feeling surprised (although I shouldn't have been!) when I learned
that ancient Rome had their own historians studying ancient history, but who
didn't consider themselves to be ancient history.

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trelonid
>The exact ingredients vary from one coffin to the next, but the goo was
always made from some of these ingredients

what I understand is that they didn't measure the ingredients, but rather put
how much they thought was good

~~~
claviska
I don’t think it’s arbitrary. Despite being from similar times, burials
occurred decades or even centuries apart. The recipe likely evolved based on
experimentation and availability of ingredients.

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planetis
Let me guess, another ancient artifact stolen by the british museum. It
rightfully belongs to the Egyptian goverment... similarly the Elginian marbles
belong to Greece.

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bagpuss
here is a proposal to procure some of this liquid and drink it

"we need to drink the red liquid from the cursed dark sarcophagus in the form
of some sort of carbonated energy drink so we can assume its powers and
finally die"

[https://www.change.org/p/let-people-drink-the-red-liquid-
fro...](https://www.change.org/p/let-people-drink-the-red-liquid-from-the-
dark-sarcophagus)

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DagAgren
Is it maybe a little bit weird to be doing research on old corpses that were
just dragged out of their graves in a foreign country?

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ggm
If they had said mastic I would have been there like a shot. Mastic and gum-
arabic were used extensively in the ancient world.

~~~
TheGallopedHigh
Mastica(sp?) is still chewed today in Greece as some kind of chewing gum. I
wonder if the word “masticate” zcomes from this ie vice versa

~~~
twic
It's also used to flavour a kind of festive brioche:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsoureki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsoureki)

And liqueur:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastika)

Etymologically, it looks like the root word means "chew", and i would guess
that mastikha is named for that, rather than vice versa:

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B9%CF%87%CE%AC%CF%89)

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aszantu
tldr: plant oil, animal fat, tree resin, beeswax and bitumen

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vncecartersknee
x-files theme intensifies

~~~
raindropm
or Prometheus. Seriously, never touch anything that looks like black goo,
especially in ancient setting.

~~~
sgt
I was thinking Stargate!

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gottareply2020
Indeed

~~~
wkearney99
I see what you did there.

