A mummy called the ‘air-dried chaplain’ has long been shrouded in mystery. Scientists say they now have answers
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It was stored in a basement church in the remote Alps Village, a group of unusually well -reserved human remains that were a rich source of rumors and speculation.
The local flag suggested that the mummified body, which was believed to be the 18 -century clergyman surrendered to a contagious disease, was recovered from a grave after a few years of death and moved to a basement in St. Thomas Am Blasinstein, a church in the village of North Danube in Austria.
Preserving the miracle body – with the skin and tissues is intact – early on the pilgrims who believe that the remains may give the properties. After centuries, a capsule object in an X -ray examination of the mummy revealed that the cleric may have achieved a more evil end, indicating that it may be poisoned.
Now, a team of scientists presents a new insight into many questions that were not answered surrounding the mysterious mummy, nicknamed “The Priest Dried Air”. Revelation comes after the renewal of a hadith driven by water leakage in a crypt that created an unexpected opportunity to conduct a modern scientific analysis on the body.
“It was a profitable situation for both sides,” said Andreas Nerlich, a professor of medicine at the University of Ludwig-Maximilis in Germany. We got the mummy for a long time enough to make a perfect analysis. “
Through a tomography, Nerlich and its colleagues were able to confirm the mummy identity and chemical analysis of bone samples and tissues. The researchers reported their results in a paper published on Friday in the magazine Borders in medicine.
The previously unknown mummification method
The external appearance of the mummy from the front (A) and the back (b) did not appear any cracks on the body. Andreas Nerlich courtesy
The biggest surprise to the study came as a result of a tomography examination: Scientists found that the abdominal cavity and pelvis filled with materials such as wood chips from fir and linen trees, hemp, linen tissue, including some of them were strictly embroidered. Additional toxic analysis revealed the effects of zinc chloride and other elements.
“It was really unexpected because the walls of the body were completely intact,” he said.
To explain this clear contradiction, the theoretical team has been included in the rectum. The researchers believe that it is a mixture of materials that kept the mummy in its clear air condition.
“Potatoes and fabric will have water (binding). Zinc chloride had a drying effect and reduced bacteria in the intestine,” Nerlich said.
This approach in embalming is different from the well -known methods used in ancient Egypt in which opening the body is necessary. Nerlich added that this technique that was seen in the cleric was not reported in scientific literature before.
He said he believed that the method, although it has not been recorded in any textbooks since that time, may have been widely used in the eighteenth century to maintain a body for transportation or viewing.
“The Book of Mummies: an introduction to the world of the dead.”
When examining it with new multidisciplinary analysis techniques, mummies provide a richer source of studying the past than the remains of the pure skeleton. “This ranges from studying disease and medical treatments to drug use and cultural aspects such as attitudes towards death and the body,” said Kaspari, who did not participate in the research.
Although it is clear that the “dried priest with air” is not a normal mummy, there is a need for a more detailed analysis to say categorically if the zinc chloride has been used to preserve the remains, as Marco Samadili, a senior researcher at the Institute of Mummy Studies in EURAC Research, the Polzano Special Research Institute, Italy, where Outzi Snowman It is located.
Samadelli noticed that small quantities of arsenic, a well -known embalming factor, were discovered in the mummy.
Decoding the mummy identity
The researchers found (left) such as small wood chips and flax fabric stuffed inside the stuffed remains, and a glass ball was discovered inside the left basin. Andreas Nerlich courtesy
The team concluded that the mummified corpse is the body of the Xaver Sidler von Rosengg, the aristocrat who was a monk before he became the deputy parish at St. Thomaseen for about six years.
He died while he was in this position in 1746 at the age of 37. Among the local population, it was rumored that the mummy was Sidler, although there was no evidence written in this sense, according to the study.
The number of radioactive carbon dating back to the sample was placed in the year between 1734 and 1780, and the body analyzes have suggested age when death from 30 to 50 years, with more than 35 and 45 years. The study indicated that the dates in both cases are in line with what is known about the end of Sidler.
In addition, the study of chemical isotopes-carbon and nitrogen variables that reflect the vegetable or animal proteins consumed-from the bone sample taken from the spine of the mummy about the presence of a high-quality diet based on grains and a large percentage of meat.
“This is well in line with the expected rural food supply of the local parish deputy,” the authors of the study wrote in their paper, adding that the absence of stress on the skeleton is equipped with the life of a priest who lacks difficult physical activity.
However, the study found that at the end of the life of the cleric, he might have suffered from food shortages, perhaps because of Austrian caliphate war Currently at the time.
What killed the “dried priest with air”?
The deputy, who had a long -term smoking habit, was not poisoned, identified the study. Instead, researchers believe that he suffers from chronic tuberculosis, which may have killed him by causing severe pulmonary bleeding.
Inside the mummy, the researchers found a small glass ball with holes on both ends – perhaps part of a group of rosary beads that accidentally trapped in embalming. Nerlich said that this element is a bullet captured by X -rays that were conducted in the early first decade of the twentieth century, which raised doubts about a toxic capsule.
Nerlich added that the team did not find any evidence that the body had been buried and extracted. Most likely, the body was ready to return to the “Mother’s Monastery” in the deputy, 15 km (9.3 miles), but for lost reasons until time, the body was left in the church, and she did not start its last journey.
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