I have also watched the NG special in the past, and I would tend to believe that the mummification was intentional.
Just because the organs were not removed does not automatically discount it as deliberate mummification)which I take to mean the long-term preservation of the body). And in fact using this method, they were able to produce a supple mummy with joints and soft tissues intact. If anything, this method was superior to the Egyptian method, where the body is totally dessicated.
Also, the monk mommies of Japan (which is a process of self-mummification) also did not involve the removal of the organs.
They took a lot of trouble to emtomb her. If memory serves me correct, I think they emtombed here hundreds to feet below ground, and had all kinds of different materials (I forgot what) surrounding her coffin which would help with the preservation.
If the truth of the mysterious liquid can be solved, then it is indeed a case of deliberate mummification.
Sigh, I sense I am wasting my time by bringing in some facts when I am faced with the electonic nipple of 'television'.
I have written plenty else before I mentioned the organs being present. This is not the main reason I discount it being a 'preserved corpse' by deliberate human agency.
There is much more that points to the tomb as the cause
BTW Wrapping her in silk, and in a layered coffin is a practice since Zhou times at least. Even surrounding tomb objects are draped in silk and bronzes I have inspected routinely have silk imprints on them for this reason. There is no reason to think Lady Xins complex coffin or careful wrapping was very different since a burial in Zhou or Tang would be much the same.
Wrapped in silk. Layered coffin. The objects that were buried with her are well known, and even listed in an inventory inside her tomb. Her tomb contents were catologued before the tomb was sealed. Why she was preserved is not a result of the coffin or a wrapping when pears on plates outside her coffin still held their shape.
I can't stop people from believing what they like despite all the evidence to the contrary. Any compound on her skin would NOT be the primary cause when other organic tomb contents survive outside her coffin.
It is so very simply plain and evident that the enviroment was quite special.
A good story...and a titilating 'mystery elixir' cannot compete with the more plainly established facts even if I show them here as photographs.
......BUT If you want to talk about Chinese as 'superior' mummification to the Eygptians then consider the below;.
(Hint; Do just NOT believe everything you hear on TV, including sadly the Discovery Channel and History Channel.)
1; The corpse is not even preserved like a real mummy at all. This supple corpse would require very tender care to not rot into a pile of foul goo after being inspected. Modern people need to care for them. If not kept in a sealed & controled enviroment the body is still raw meat. Only by being sealed away has it survived since first found.
2; The tombs either side of her family members were not sealed so well (despite being buried not many years apart) and all remaining of them were scraps of bone. They were also in layered coffins of large size. This makes Lady Xin a unique stroke of fortune since the actual tomb was sealed from air although there is no suggestion the construction was different. Any supposed 'mystery elixir' if used by her son and husband seems to have only left a few leg bones and a bit of pelvis for scientists.
3; The Han ideas of body decay were based on erroneous beliefs such as the preservative qualities of jade. They put jade plugs in the body cavities and thought this would work. This was based on ideas that continued both before and after Lady Xin died and makes Lady Xin again extremely rare. Trapping the 'chi' was what keep flesh from rotting alchemists assured the wealthy Han people, so jade was used throughout the period instead.
4; The enviroment of the tomb preserved everything from silkware through to meat & fruit on the plates, to the lacquered wooden plates too. Were these fruits also 'mummified?' and swimming in mysterious liquid? Clearly not. If meat on a plate survives then why is a mystery chemical needed to explain the Lady?
5; The appearance of the swollen toungue was something deliberate mummifiers avoided by tying the jaw shut, as in the Taklamahan mummies in Xinjiang. The removal of the organs is typical even if not universal. Cultures which mummify bodies seem to have stumbled on this organ corruption effect and undignified tongue swelling by experience. The Han had no long tradition like this to draw experience from.
6; The tomb is not hundreds of feet deep, nor unique in it's appearance. The cross section diagram I have seen is typical for a Chinese shaft burial and the use of layered clay & charcoal was not specifically commented on as unique. In the Eastern Han period these early style shaft burials became LESS common which again suggests the tomb was not seen as crucially functional to preservation. Later chambered burials and brick lined tombs became the standard. I have diagrams of the Lady Xin tomb and it is not visually any different to another of the West Han period.
7; Gas that escaped when the tomb was opened show that the seal on the tomb was what caused this preservation. The mechanism is not mysterious and no other reason is needed. This tomb and a handful of others with preserved bodies suggest the effect is even rarer than being hit by lightening twice compared to the hundreds of thousands of ancient tombs opened in the last several decades.
8; A comparible & more recent preserved corpse from Ching era was supple-fleshed when first exposed but upon the action of the air the body changed colour to waxy yellow and decay began. Again the mechanism that prevents and then resumes decay is not a real mummification by Chinese, but a sealed & stable enviroment which stops decay causing bacteria to act normally.
9; If an elixer existed or a process like this documetary suggested was used then where are all the Han 'mummies'? In Eygpt they were so common they were ground up for fertiliser in the 19th century yet of 400 years of Han history we have a total of 3 bodies which means I can count on one hand and have fingers left over. Seems a not very effect 'elixir' if it existed. It suggests there was no magic formula.
10; The diagrams of the tomb, extracted details of the autopsy, reveal there is already a model to explain the preservation. This unknown liquid (since the body has been inspected since the 1970's) sounds like a pretty poor primary reason to be elevated above the Eygptians when Chinese corpse preservation is as rare as teeth in a chicken. The hyped liquid on Lady Dai is refered to specifically as just 'traces' on the skin which contrasts with the idea the body was found in a liquid.
I expect the body was washed before burial. It doesnt need to be an embalming, nor would such a surface application be effective.
**A seperate preserved corpse found in 2002 suggests these documentary burials were quite different, while Lady Dai had 'traces' of an acidic solution and was wrapped in silk the other body was actually 'swimming' in liquid and the solution was not acidic (and perhaps not even a preservative one expert notes) and so the acidic traces on one and the actual alkaline liquid on another do not mean there is a common technique being used. Quite the opposite.
The version that she was sealed in liquid, or found 'swimming' in liquid turns out that it may just be she was bathed in something which left traces on her skin (see below) but that the idea this was a preservative is far from certain. It certainly did not preserve corpses if the tomb wasn't sealed, i.e The Marquis.
11; Han emperors and the Liu family had access to the best advice on tomb building, the afterlife & mortuary industry, and had a monoploy on the use of jade burial suits. These suits were 10 years in the making and in association with jade plugs were what the Han put their faith in to prevent decay.
http://www.chinahist...showtopic=14562 Han law allowed for a large amount of cash annually to be invested in Imperial tomb preparation...yet no Han Emperor or King has been found other than as scraps of bone and dust.
Why would Lady Xin (but not her son, husband or the Han elite nor Emperor) have access to a secret formula (based on quite alien concepts) and yet those buried right beside her fail to use it? Something just doesn't add up.
12; There is no evidence before or after the Han period of experiments or successes with preserving corpses (beyond erroneous alchemy like jade plugs). This makes these bodies almost unique even amongst larger Han cemetaries on the same site and contemporary Han burials.
If this was a technology that existed we could expect to see clusters of bodies appearing in graves instead of singular finds in seperate places where all the neighbouring corpses have decayed normally.
The mechanism by which Lady Xin's preservation happened does not need a mystery chemical when other objects in her tomb survived almost as well. There is no concensus a chemical was used, even what it was...and there seems to be no link between at least 2 of the 3 preserved corpses mentioned in the NG documentary.
In support of my above points (futile though it may be) here are some sources;
#8
In the second exhibition room one can see the 2,000-year-old female corpse excavated from #1 tomb. All kinds of measures were adopted during her burial, including burying the coffin very deeply and sealing it tightly so that the coffin lacked oxygen as fuel for bacteria. The corpse therefore still had hair, its joints were limber and the soft organs were still soft. At the end of 1972, medical research was carried out on the corpse. The blood-type of the lady was A-type; during her lifetime she suffered from both lung and heart disease
.
http://www.chinamuse...m/changsham.htm#6
"The {Mawangdui} tombs followed a mixture of Chu and western Han Dynasty burial practices. The tombs were made of large cypress planks. The outside of the tombs were layered with white clay and charcoal; white clay layering was a practice that originated with Chu burials, while charcoal layering was a practice that was followed during the early western Han Dynasty in the Changsha area. The tombs contained nested lacquered coffins, a Chu burial custom. The tombs also followed the burial practices dictated by Emperor Wen of Han, containing no jade or precious meta
ls."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui ....
Before the Western Han period, China practiced a two-layered coffin system, by which there was an inner and outer coffin. Since Xin Zhui was married to very high rank, she used a four-layered kind of coffin. The inner coffins were painted. The second layer of the coffin was the most beautiful with black background painted with scenes of heaven including strange spirits and peculiar animals floating about
.
http://www.chinamuse...m/changsham.htm#10 (To illustrate that there is debate here, and while some focus on mystery elements others point to the tomb conditions.)
Scientists are still baffled as to what preserved the body of Lady Dai. Some say it may have been a mysterious liquid in which the body was immersed, traces of which were still found when her body was discovered
.
http://gannsdeen.wor...ering-lady-dai/Archaeologists and pathologists are still pondering the possible reasons behind her state of preservation. Was it the elaborate tomb construction that protected the body? Or, more controversially, it could have been the mysterious liquid that the body was immersed in?
http://english.peopl...825_154710.htmlThe tomb offers several clues . Lady Dai's corpse was swaddled in 20 layers of fine silk, which would have suffocated the bacteria which normally devour the body soon after death.
The body was also inside four coffins and placed in a 20ft square chamber so to cool it and it acted like a natural refrigerator. Five tons of charcoal were piled on top followed by 4ft of clay and 50ft of earth to ensure the tomb was 'vacum sealed for eternity'.
Some scientists suspect the real key to her preservation, however, may lie in the reddish liquid in which the body was immersed. {washed in before burial I expect, since there are only traces left}.
If so, the secret may have died with her. Tests have revealed it is mildly acidic and contains magnesium and salt, but have so far failed to identify all its contents.
http://www.forumgard...read.php?t=1393
Edited by Kenneth, 11 December 2006 - 07:56 PM.
