(ORDO NEWS) — What people have not dragged into their mouths throughout their history.
And some readers meet such news with indignation, believing that human remains are not the subject of research.
Scientists are urged to have respect for the dead, it’s good that they don’t start legal proceedings, like Mr. Frankland, the hero of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
But it turns out that only scientists did not always show interest in ancient remains. And I’m not talking about crazy collectors. Since the Middle Ages, Europeans have been eating… Egyptian mummies. And not from hunger.
At first, for some reason, they believed that the crushed mummy was a medicine. And at once from everything: both from bubonic plague, and from a headache.
Mummies brought from Egyptian tombs to Europe were ground into powder and sold in pharmacies from the 12th century onward for the next 500 years.
And since demand exceeded supply, mummies began to be tritely faked – the bodies of non-ancient Egyptians were sold to Europeans dried and wrapped in cloth.
Then faith in the medicinal properties of mummies frayed, but a little later, in the Victorian era, with its fashion for everything gloomy and mysterious, the remains of the unfortunate ancient Egyptians again began to be in demand in Europe. Here you can read about it in more detail .
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