Flammable Mummies

              In this day and age, there are massive projects underway to try to find and preserve ancient Egyptian tombs and the remains inside of them. These thousand year-old mummified corpses provide a wealth of information for scientists everywhere. But despite the massive popularity of the preservation process, why aren't there many left?

This fire smells weird.

               Well, mostly because they were burned for firewood. "Firewood?" One might think, "but only Pharaohs could be mummies!" This is not necessarily true. Just about anybody could choose "mummification" as their funeral option. In fact, most Egyptian peasants would spend their entire life savings on the process. Often times opting for the cool burial over other less important stuff, like food. Plus, the desert would naturally mummify a dead body due to the high temperatures and dry air. So by the 18th century, when mummifying was no longer popular, Egypt was full of mummies. 

              It also happened that at a time when the weather in Egypt was getting colder. So during winters when families would run out of firewood (there is not a ton of trees in Egypt), they would simply toss in a highly flammable deceased family member. Or pretty much any mummy they could get their hands on. 

Dude looks totally burnable.

             And they weren't only used for firewood, they were ground up and used in medicines, sold to Western paper companies for wrapping paper (this stopped when several people died cholera from them). They were also often sold to wealthy english men to have "unwrapping" parties. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what is sounds like.

"Somebody come quick! Madonna needs CPR!"