This episode is inspired by a suggestion from a listener, William. If you'd like to make a

suggestion, you can do so on Facebook and Instagram at Morbid Curiosity Podcast, on Twitter,

at Morbid Podcast, and on our website, www.morbidcuriositypodcast.com. This episode contains

discussions of death and post-mortem surgical procedures.

If that's not something you want to hear about, this may be a good episode to skip.

Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so the mysterious and unsolved.

Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages.

I am one of those people.

My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity podcast.

Music Western society has been fascinated with ancient Egypt, especially mummies, for hundreds of years.

Mummies are corpses that, due to desiccation or drying, are so well preserved that they retain skin and often hair.

This usually occurs due to burial or deposition in a dry, hot or cold environment or in acidic and anaerobic conditions such as those found in bogs.

Egyptian mummies are special because they weren't made naturally. Humans found a way to artificially

create them. The Egyptians aren't the only

ones who did this, but the mummies they made are the most plentiful, and often accompanied by

monumental tombs. Fascination with Egyptian mummies began not with how they came to be mummified,

but what they could do for living humans. From the 12th century

to as late as the 19th century, Egyptian mummies were ground up and used as medicines by

Europeans. This occurrence was due to a mistranslation of the word mummia, a term used by

ancient Arabic physicians to describe bitumen, a dark asphalt-like substance used

in Arabic medicine. In turn, Arabic and European physicians confused the dark coloration

of Egyptian mummies as being caused by using bitumen in the process of mummification. Therefore,

...