“People Ate Mummies”

Yes, you read that right. People ate mummies, and the reason as to why will leave you surprised.

Well, it has also to do with medicine. Now, this is where things get real.

In order, to understand why people ate mummies, one needs to understand why people ate bitumen. Yes, people ate bitumen too.  For those of you, who don’t know what it is, bitumen is another word asphalt.

Things keep getting weird, right? Back in the 16th-century world was a different place.

Moving on, people believed bitumen has medical benefits. We all know it has various construction applications, and it has been used in the medicinal field too. But not as an edible but for making casts and setting bones.

But people are people, and people do what they do. Even ancient Romans themselves eating bitumen. They claimed it cured several diseases including dysentery.

Now, you might ask, how did they go from eating bitumen to eating mummies? Good question.

The thing is back then people used to eat bitumen like we breathe air. Thinking it will cure their medical issues. Naturally, it wasn’t long before they ran out of it.  

Coincidently, this happened around the same time as Europeans found Egyptian Mummies. And you know, what happens next. But this still doesn’t answer why they eat mummies.

Well, the reason behind it is that mummies are covered in black stuff. Which is probably some kind of preservatives, but people didn’t think so scientifically back then.

All they say is, “mummies are black, bitumen is black, must be the same thing, right?”. This claim was further solidified following the claim of a translator who said, “mummy goop is bitumen”.

So, to fulfill the shortage of medicinal asphalt, people started using newly found supplement “mummies”.

This practice was termed “corpse medicine”. And mummies must be yummy, considering how quickly people ate them. Plus, they were available with different recipes too.

You could buy a powder made out of mummies, or buy whole body parts. There is nothing as healthy as a good-old mummy. Boy, they harassed dead Pharaohs, didn’t they.

Fun fact: Mummies in addition to being a Medical snack, were also used to make a type of exotic paint.

Again, bitumen and mummies were the weirdest things people ate. You see, eating powders made out of the unburied skulls of three men who died a violent death” cured epilepsy.

 Thank god, medicine is what it is today. Otherwise, you would have been prescribed to eat a live human as a cure for your cold.

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