Christian Mummies/Were Christians Mummified in Egypt? - Archaeology Ep 12

Archaeologists excavating a Coptic monastery in Egypt uncovered something many might find unusual, a set of human burials associated with the monastery but which appeared to have been mummified. Mummification has been strongly associated with the traditional pre-Christian religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. Can we call these Christian mummies? I'm Madam Archaeologist, your go-to informant on everything archaeology and in this episode I want to dive into the world of ancient Egyptian mummification but from a different perspective, a Christian one. I'll discuss what mummies are and establish my criteria for identifying one and then we'll take a look at the potential mummies from the monastery and elsewhere and decide whether they qualify for being labeled as such and I guarantee you will not have seen any YouTube video on a topic like this one. You probably have some questions already. We're here discussing Christian mummies in Egypt but isn't mummification a pre-Christian Egyptian practice? When was Egypt even Christian? Let's take a step back and look at the wider context. Egypt became directly incorporated into the Roman world in 30 BC after Octavian, who later went by Augustus, defeated Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, and Mark Antony. This was one of many turning points in Egypt's history because it became a province of the Roman Empire and so it was subjected to influences coming from Rome and later Constantinople when the empire's capital shifted eastward. Egypt was a part of the Roman Empire for almost 700 years until the Arab conquest of 641. At the beginning of Roman rule, Egypt's traditional religious practices persisted and the deities of the Egyptian pantheon could be worshipped side by side with Roman gods and goddesses through what we call the Interpretatio Romana, that is, the equation of Egyptian deities with Roman ones. This was also done in the preceding Ptolemaic period where through the Interpretatio Graeca, Egyptian and Greek deities could be worshipped together too. I discuss this in greater detail in my episode, Religion in Ptolemaic Egypt. Now under Roman rule, with the Interpretationes Romana and Graeca, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians could all worship together in Egypt without anybody having to compromise their gods. That said, there were other religious developments taking place at this time as well, namely the rise of Christianity. In the year 313, co-emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan which banned the persecution of Christians and established religious tolerance towards them. Constantine, who became sole emperor in 324, even favored the Christian faith and its leaders. Not only did he summon the First Council of Nicaea in the year 325 where the Nicene Creed was established, but he also granted bishops privileges such as giving them tax exemptions, exempting them from curial duties, and allowing them to preside over court cases with their word as the word of God being final and unquestionable. This set the scene for the decades that followed and throughout the 4th and 5th centuries, with the favor of the Roman emperors, some bishops came to acquire a great deal of power. They started asserting more influence as civic and religious leaders, and more and more people around the empire converted to Christianity. A short attempt in the 360s under the Emperor Julian to turn back the clock and revive paganism was, ultimately, unsuccessful, and in the year 380, the Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica which made Nicene Christianity the state religion. For over 250 years, Egypt, as a province of the Roman Empire, was thus officially Christian. But Egypt wasn't just a passive recipient of greater religious changes affecting the Roman Empire as a whole. It was influenced by local developments taking place within its own territory as well, both before the official adoption of Christianity by Roman emperors and afterwards. Egypt was home to Christian communities from early on. Some later textual evidence suggests that sporadic Christian communities existed in Egypt from as early as the 1st century AD. Monasticism was also born in Egypt, and this really picked up after Christianity became the Roman Empire's state religion. Two beautiful monasteries still standing today are the Red and White Monasteries, both founded in the 4th century. The White Monastery, under the leadership of the abbot Shenouteh, who is said to have lived an exceptionally long life, amassed a very large community of some 2,200 monks and 1,800 nuns on record. The Coptic Church in Egypt was also established in the 1st century in Alexandria by Mark the Evangelist, and it officially split from Roman Constantinople following the Council of Chalcedon. Even though Egypt wasn't officially Christian for a very long time, their religion certainly had an impact on Egyptian culture, history, and society. Now, since the main topic of this video is identifying Christian mummies, let's ask an important question. What is a mummy? The answer is probably obvious, but I will go over it here because a mummy is a dead human or animal whose soft tissues have been preserved, and there are two types, natural mummies and artificial mummies. It's the latter that I'm concerned with here. I'm not looking at natural mummies, the corpses that have been well preserved due to their burial environment. The burial environment also affects the preservation of artificial mummies, but there is a big difference because with artificial mummies, there was human agency involved. Humans have treated a corpse to help preserve it. The word mummy actually comes from the Persian and later Arabic word mumia, which refers to a black substance we call bitumen that was used by the ancient Egyptians in the When Arabs encountered mummified bodies, they attributed the dark substance they saw to bitumen, and so they decided to call these bodies mumia. But bitumen was by no means universally used in ancient Egypt, and the darkened color of the mummies could arise from a variety of bombs because natural materials in general darken over time. This study found that bitumen was, in fact, first used during the New Kingdom and then picked up in frequency after that, really peaking during the Greco-Roman period. If we look at artificial mummification methods in ancient Egypt overall, we see variation both over time as well as within the same time period. In general, for people who could afford it, embalmers would practice mummification by evisceration. That is, they would remove the internal organs, including the brain, which is a separate step called excerebration. The mummification process would follow many stages, of which one of the most important was treating the body with natrin, a salt that would help preserve the body by absorbing moisture. I won't give an exhaustive description of all the various steps that might take place during the artificial mummification process, but some other steps in creating a high-quality mummy in Egypt included pouring resin over the body, which would have helped prevent bacterial growth, treating the body with other materials like perfumed oils, and wrapping it in strips of linen called bandages. This last step is what creates the stereotypical image of an ancient Egyptian mummy. At a lower level, embalmers might just remove or wash out the digestive organs and cover the body with natrin. Mummification was an expensive practice, and after it became increasingly available to non-royals from the New Kingdom onwards, you got what you could afford. If you were an ancient Egyptian living at that time, part of your life encompassed preparing for your afterlife. You would at some point, according to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, pay a visit to an embalmer's workshop and pick the mummification package, we could say, that matched your economic status. Scientific studies of mummies have shown us, however, that there was a great deal of variation in the thoroughness of the mummification process, as well as in the materials used in different stages. The mummies of some of the New Kingdom pharaohs are examples of mummification performed to a very high standard. Seti I's mummy is considered one of Egypt's finest. The embalmers performed high-quality evisceration and excerbration. They desiccated the body with natrin, stuffed the insides, and anointed the corpse amply with resin before wrapping him in fine bandages and placing amulets within the wrappings. You can see the expertise of the embalmers when looking at his face. The pharaoh is extremely well preserved. There are also examples of mummies who are either partially eviscerated or don't appear to have been eviscerated at all. Some mummies look elaborate on the outside, but not as much was done to the inside. According to this book, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, the majority of mummies of non-royal individuals of the New Kingdom present a different picture. Although the external trappings may appear impressive, the actual techniques of mummification employed were rudimentary. Often the corpse was simply dried and wrapped without any attempt to extract the brain and viscera." One example from this time period would be the mummies of the royal architect Ka and his wife Merit. They were treated with natrin and various balms, but there was absolutely no attempt at evisceration, and Ka's organs are very well preserved. And this is not limited to the New Kingdom. An example from the Middle Kingdom period would be the mummies of the queens and princesses of King Mentuhotep II. They featured no abdominal incision to suggest that their visceral organs had been removed in this manner. It's possible that an injection method was used to dissolve some organs, but this has not been conclusively established, and we see organs left behind. Their bodies were treated with natrin and oil or resin prior to wrapping, but it doesn't look like evisceration was performed, although if it was performed, it certainly wasn't to the highest standard. Meanwhile, this study of children's mummies dating mainly to between the Late and Roman periods found that many children did not receive mummification by evisceration, which is in contrast to the 75% of adults who received evisceration in the sample of another study. So there was much variation in terms of mummification techniques and materials, and based on many different factors not just related to time period and social status. Now, given all the different standards of Ancient Egyptian mummification and variation in its practice, how can we establish a set of criteria for identifying an artificial Ancient Egyptian mummy? Some may think that evisceration was an important part of the Ancient Egyptian mummification process, but we've seen how evisceration wasn't always performed, and not just on those who wanted to be mummified on a limited budget. So evisceration could be a sign that we're dealing with a mummy, but it's not the defining feature, it's not what makes the mummy a mummy. Neither is the use of bitumen, mumia, or the word mummy comes from, because not all mummies were treated with this substance either. The main factor that brings all the examples together is human agency. There had to have been an attempt, however thorough, to preserve the body, and it had to have worked to a great degree because, by definition, mummies boast preserved soft tissues. This is my number one criteria. I want to see evidence that humans were trying to preserve the corpse and that much soft tissue has survived. Usually this involves deliberate desiccation of the corpse. We can then see if our Christian examples boast other features that we've seen in the Ancient Egyptian mummies, such as wrappings and the treatment of the body with bombs or substances to help prevent bacterial growth and maybe give it a good smell. We have some very interesting burials associated with the Monastery of Saint Paulus at Deir el Bahit, those same ones I mentioned at the very beginning of this video. The Monastery of Saint Paulus is the largest Coptic monastery known so far in the area of western Thebes and dates to the 6th to 10th centuries. The associated cemetery features both skeletons and what look, upon first glance, to be mummies. The monastic context tells us that these were Christians, but their burials aren't exactly what you'd imagine as typical. There seems to have been some sort of a social hierarchy at the monastery because not everyone interred in its cemetery had been treated equally in death. But for this episode here, I'm particularly interested in those individuals that, on the surface, look like they were mummified. Can we actually call them mummies, though? The researchers who published their anthropological work on these individuals had no problem labelling them mummies, but let's investigate deeper. Overall, the individuals were well preserved with their skin, eyes, ears, and hair still surviving. Large quantities of salt, which they don't specify any further but could have been natron, were found directly on the bodies and in between the wrappings. Juniper berries were also found both on the bodies and in between the wrappings. There was no sign of evisceration, but the bodies had had some black bitumen-like substance poured inside of them and their lungs are preserved. They were then wrapped in layers of linen and tied. Here's what one of the well-preserved examples looks like. Let's compare this analysis to our criteria list. We have evidence of artificial mummification here, that humans were attempting to preserve the bodies. The salt dehydrated or desiccated them, the juniper berries had antimicrobial properties, and the black substance poured inside the bodies could have been bitumen, but this still needs to be chemically tested. Finally, these individuals were even wrapped in layers of linen. All of these helped to preserve the bodies and point to human agency. And most importantly, the attempt worked, because the mummies are generally well preserved. These examples satisfy my criteria for being labeled artificial mummies. Some of you may be asking, how do we know for sure that these burials are associated with the Well, the wrappings tell me that these are mummies from the late antique period. That's when Christianity peaked in Egypt. They follow the general trends of being wrapped and bound, and featuring accentuated head and feet areas. So in all likelihood, these mummies are associated with the monastic complex. It is also noticeable that all the mummies were men. If we were dealing with a civic cemetery, it would expect women to have been buried there as well. I'll also note that the mummies were buried facing east, which can signify a Christian identity when contextualized. I'll discuss this point in more detail soon. Now, I can't tell you that all Egyptian mummies dated to the late antique period are Christians. Christians and pagans were often buried side by side in civic cemeteries, and it can be tricky, unless there is explicit reference to Christianity within a grave, to establish the religious identity of the deceased. And even then, say we find a cross in a burial, we don't know if it signifies the religious identity of the deceased or of the mourners. This is especially apparent in infant burials. An infant cannot choose his or her religion. And so when we find crosses in infant burials, we know that a Christian identity has been ascribed by those who performed the burial. But since these particular mummies from the monastery of St. Paulos are from a monastic context, we can say that they were Christian mummies, and more specifically, Coptic mummies. This begs the question, why were some of the Christian dead getting mummified? We don't know for sure, but one possibility is that it had to do with the Christian belief in resurrection and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Christians believed that the dead were merely sleeping, awaiting the second coming when Many funerary archaeologists have been studying the ancient dead from the perspective of attitudes towards the body. Although this was heavily debated by Christians in the first centuries AD, some advocated that the body must remain intact for the second coming. Mummification would therefore be compatible with this belief. Since mummification emerged in relation to the much older religious traditions of ancient Egypt, what we see here is an old practice getting adapted to accommodate new ideas. Another possibility at the monastery of St. Paulos, in particular, could also be social status. It looks like some sort of social hierarchy was established at the monastery because not everybody there received mummification. One theory is that the mummified men were monks, they were part of that monastic community, and that the non-mummified men were workers at the monastery. It's also possible that a mixture of different factors contributed to the choice of whether to mummify or not. Let's take a look at a very different set of Christian burials from a site called Keles. Keles was a Romano-Egyptian village occupied from the 1st to 4th centuries and has some really well-preserved structures and associated cemeteries. One of these cemeteries, abbreviated K2, contains the bodies of people buried in the Christian tradition. We can infer this because they match the burials found at the settlement's west church. At this church, 11 bodies were buried on their backs facing east. At the K2 cemetery, more than 700 graves have been excavated and all individuals found so far were also interred on their backs facing east. Which, as we have seen, is a Christian practice associated with the second coming of Jesus Christ because it was thought that on this day he would come from the east and so when the dead were resurrected, they would be facing him. Can we find any mummies at Keles? This publication tells us that all bodies were originally wrapped in tide, but most of the wrappings don't survive. Some show evidence of an attempt at preserving the body. There is evidence of treatment with oils mixed with clay. There's also evidence that a few bodies after desiccation were treated with bitumen, but overall, most of the bodies have become skeletons, only a few retained soft tissues. Salt also was not found here. Since, by the definition of the word, mummies need to have soft tissues preserved, most of the individuals here don't satisfy my criteria for being labelled mummies. I would say that some individuals, where soft tissues have been preserved, could qualify as very crude mummies at best, but they're nothing like those we saw at the monastery of Saint Paulos. This might be the best example of a potential mummy candidate from Keles. That's rosemary placed on top of the wrapped body, so it's likely that some form of body treatment was given, but this needs to be confirmed with further analysis. If no soft tissue is preserved under the wrappings, and we don't see evidence that the body was treated for preservation, then this is just a wrapped individual, not a mummy. And the 11 bodies associated with the West Church absolutely do not qualify for ever having been mummies at all. They are skeletons, and there is absolutely no evidence that their bodies had been treated with any organic materials or substances. Finally, let's take a look at a peculiar type of object that can suggest the former presence of Christian mummies. Mummy labels. Mummy labels are these small wooden objects that function like tags to identify the deceased. Although unexpected, some tags have been found that tell us that an individual was a Christian, like this one here from Acme. It tells us what the name of the deceased individual was, who his father was, and who his grandfather was. We also see the Christian symbol of the Chi roll. Here's another example. It has clear Christian references, including two crosses. The label gives us a name and that this person lived 75 years. It's very interesting to see how some traditional Egyptian funerary practices persisted with the adoption of Christianity. That's it for this episode. It's clear that mummification wasn't a practice strictly associated with the pagan traditions of ancient Egypt. Christians could be mummified too, even if not to the same standard as that seen during Egypt's pharaonic period. If you have any thoughts or questions, let me know in the comments. Subscribe for more cool content by our go-to informant on everything archaeology, Madam Archaeologist.