Meanwhile europeans since the 12th century were stealing mummies from egypt to use their remains as “medicine” even the word ‘mummy’ derived from such practice.
Ughhhhh to expand on this awful bit of history: ‘mummia’ was the term for some common kinds of dark powdered resinous medicines, which someone later discovered you could wring out of preserved human remains. The term “mummified” means treated in a way that produces mummia, and thence arose the term mummy. It’s popularity as a medicine (words fail to describe my revulsion) led to the wide adoption of the term in popular culture to refer to someone who had been treated in such a way as a ‘mummy’, possibly due to a mistranslation (tho there’s scant evidence of that being the specific cause - it seems more likely it was a misunderstanding that two similar substances were not the same substance, and that they were primarily familiar with dead-human mummia because of the crusades. There’s… a lot of debate on the issue though)
Meanwhile europeans since the 12th century were stealing mummies from egypt to use their remains as “medicine” even the word ‘mummy’ derived from such practice.
Ughhhhh to expand on this awful bit of history: ‘mummia’ was the term for some common kinds of dark powdered resinous medicines, which someone later discovered you could wring out of preserved human remains. The term “mummified” means treated in a way that produces mummia, and thence arose the term mummy. It’s popularity as a medicine (words fail to describe my revulsion) led to the wide adoption of the term in popular culture to refer to someone who had been treated in such a way as a ‘mummy’, possibly due to a mistranslation (tho there’s scant evidence of that being the specific cause - it seems more likely it was a misunderstanding that two similar substances were not the same substance, and that they were primarily familiar with dead-human mummia because of the crusades. There’s… a lot of debate on the issue though)