German researchers have unwrapped the secrets of mummification by discovering the key preservative that made mummies last for thousands of years. Ulrich Weser of Tuebingen University and colleagues analyzed the chemical components of some unused embalming material found at Deir el-Bahari, Egypt, next to the exceptionally preserved 2,500-year-old mummy Saankh-kare. Gas chromatography of the brown embalming resin revealed the presence of a preservative chemical called "guaiacol," plus other components normally found in a fluid known as "cedar oil." Given the prevalence in the resin of guaiacols from coniferous wood-tar oils, our findings indicate that the embalming material was prepared from cedar trees," Weser wrote in the current issue of the journal Nature. Indeed, the cedar oil extraction process was already described in A.D. 77 by Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder. "The wood of the tree is chopped up and put into ovens and heated by means of a fire packed all round outside. The first liquid that exudes flows like water down a pipe; in Syria this is called 'cedar-juice,' and it is so strong that in Egypt it is used for embalming the bodies of the dead," Pliny wrote in his Naturalis Historiae. Egyptologists have long believed the account was not reliable as it was written centuries later. Moreover, according to Weser, an unfortunate tradition of confusion between cedar and juniper trees — in today's terminology as well as in ancient times, some juniper trees are called cedar — has led scholars to think that the embalming oil was extracted from juniper.
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