http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2...tent_368631.htm

I remember seeing a han mummy when I was a child during an exhibit in Singapore

It's amasing they have such great methods of preservation.

She is Lady Xin, marquise of Dai.
I would like to know about the other 2 Han 'mummies' mentioned but I suspect the situation will be the same.
Please note this isn’t a mummy or a truly preserved corpse at all. I have seen Lady Xin referred to misleadingly in other articles on Chinese achievements as ‘mummified’ but this isn’t a mummy preserved in the sense of the older Egyptian ones, or even the true Xiajiang mummies which date to Shang, let alone a simple corpse preserved in a peat swamp.
Even the Xianjiang mummies had their jaws tied shut to prevent the tongue swelling grotesquely and forcing out like we see here on lady Xin.
Lady Xin is accidental.

What had preserved Lady Xin are the conditions in her tomb, and not any ‘technique’ of mummification. It is worth noting these articles never outline what the mummification involved, because there was none at all.

I have several pages devoted to this tomb find in one of my texts and it outlines that her wooden coffin, silk clothing, fresh food & meals set out on plates, carved wooden figures & laquerware, cosmetics, seals, bamboo and textiles…and even the food in her stomach and parasites in her intestines all survived.
None of these are ‘mummified’ or preserved. They survived only due to the conditions in the tomb……
‘’’’‘the remarkable state of preservation in which the marquise and her tomb contents were found was evidently due to the dense clay, absorbent charcoal and the unvarying temperature below the earth. Nothing could get in or out of the crypt. Decay causing bacteria trapped inside quickly died….. groundwater could not penetrate…. neither did moisture….the result was a cool highly humid and near sterile environment in which delicate silks and fragile laquerware and the body itself lay untouched by time.’’’’

I have heard elsewhere the when the tomb was hit by workmen a blue gas escaped and they thought it was spirits, but it was organic gas trapped for over 2,000 years.
This tomb was uniquely preserved and the people who buried her where not mummifying her as the tomb conditions alone was the reason. Once exposed to air decay would resume normally.

……..bear in mind more powerful people such as Kings and Emperors of Han had attempts to preserve bodies from decay which involved elaborate jade burial suits.
These failed completely despite the idea that jade stops decay, and the air tight seal of this ladies tomb is just a local condition and not the traditional understanding of what can preserve a corpse during Han.
There is no evidence I know of that this tomb itself was a ‘preservation technique’ different to other such tombs (as it must be incredibly rare
), nor were the Emperors in jade suits so lucky, despite their experts advice.
Many southern Chinese tombs are not so fortunate, being under the water table and clearly flooded when opened (although this can preserve wood too, such as Marquis Yi’s tomb from West Zhou).
Much like the iron age bodies preserved in peat swamps in Europe those that left her there likely had no idea of what was happening after it was finished.
Han ‘mummification’ remains a myth if the facts are looked at.

This article is misleading but not unique, and it’s missing the point of the true worth of the find. Instead of some pure speculation about ‘mummification techniques’ it is the entire contents of the Lady Xin tomb which deserve more mention, such as the 162 wooden servants & musicians, laquered tripods and vessels, combs, brushes, (the most perfect laquerware ever found)…..meals of chicken, fish and pork, fruits and eggs all set out with chopsticks and dinner sets)…and 100 marvelous silk garments of all sorts…coats, robes, skirts, mittens, slippers, undergarments etc..46 rolls of uncut fabric and more. This includes 312 slips of bamboo listing all the goods that were put in the tomb.

Frankly, if my lady looked like this, I wouldn't mummify her.

LOL! I was hesitant to come in here at first, the picture really scares me. I saw it on the history channel, and I had an aweful night's sleep.

According to this report http://www.chinapage.com/archeology/mawangdui/mawangdui.html , this is what she may have looked like in her youth:



Another report came up with this:



That's based on analysis of her skull. No mummy ever looks good - the price of not rotting away is that people thousands of years in the future may get to see you looking uglier than you ever were when alive.

The passage below theorises that Xin Zhui's preservation may have been partly due to a reddish fluid containing cinnabar and mercury that was found in her coffin. She may have been consuming elixirs containing this fluid before she died.

辛追生前滥服丹药

马王堆女尸出土时，棺材里注满了一种红色棺液。科学家们相信，这是使辛追2000多年不腐的“神液”。

罗学港说，经过化验可以证实，红色棺液成分复杂，之所以是红色，是因为掺加了朱砂，朱砂的化学成分对人体是有害的，棺液中还检测出了许多中药成分，这些东西泡在一起就成了深红色。可以肯定，这种红色液体有杀菌作用，可保尸体不腐。

红色棺液中的主要成分包括有机汞，即水银。专家推测，辛追生前可能有服用丹药的习惯。在古代中国，炼丹术是人们追求长生的主要方式之一，而炼出的丹药，本身都含有汞等对人体有害的物质，当时人们意识不到，但对于杀菌却有作用。

所以，虽然辛追生前滥服丹药，身后却阴差阳错，丹药的毒性却使得她的尸骨长久保存下来。古人能配制防腐药水

在“神液”中还发现了中药成分，从一定程度上支持了古人能够配制防腐药水的观点。“这些化学物质的结合，是古尸保存的基本原因。”罗学港说。

为什么当时比辛追地位高的人没有保留下尸骨，而辛追却可以？这起码说明这种防腐药水的配方是一个偶然因素形成的。

罗学港认为，辛追2000年不腐“充满了偶然性”。除采取了得当的防腐措施外，当时的环境一定非常干燥，有利于保存，而且棺木密封好，和外界空气隔绝避免了侵蚀，再者，马王堆墓一直没有被盗。这些因素使得辛追的尸体奇迹般保存下来。

Yes, well think about it. Mercury and jade were both thought to have magical powers, and ingested mercury was great stuff......for poisoning people!
Cinnabar. Smells nice.....really. Its a shame neither of these would preserve a corpse, but its just more half truth, without a little further thinking, I have seen about this 'mummy'
She was not mummified so her organs and even her last watermelon meal in her stomach could be studied. Her flesh was pliant.
Lady Xin was overweight, bent and very sick. '....Overweight and out of shape'.
The reconstruction is rather silly as she was an old women when she died...and ill. There are pictures of her on the very silks in her tomb and she is an old bent woman who walks will a cane due to spinal disc degeneration and a deformed spine. She was 5 feet tall. She had TB scarrs in her lungs, gallstones and intestinal parasites. She had a poorly set fracture on her right arm. She had advanced atherosclerosis...caused by fatty diet and sedentary lifestlye.She had given birth in her early life.
Her left coranary artery, the principle blood vessel, was almost totally blocked.
Note this;'
'packets of herbal medicine found in the tomb...cinnamon, magnolia bark and peppercorns for the life threatening condition.......... These traditional remedies for heart disease still prescribed by traditional chinese herbalists-were evidently to no avial....''No doubt about it..cardiologist Tsung O' Cheng 'the lady died of a heart attack''.

Mercury among other things were prescribed to the First Emperor...and these pills likely poisoned him.
Believe me, I have another documentary here on the find...and details of her autopsy. There is NO magic preservative compound or mummifcation. The clothing and food and wood preserved as well as the body were due to the tomb enviroment.
I have found Chinese newspaper articles next to useless for archeaological info and they trumpet some finds unreasonalbly and wth incomplete information. I have noted that other articles on sites I have rather more details of than the actual article will provide wild musings on ancient China that arent borne out by studying better scientific accounts. Their accounts of the Hong Shan Neihuliang site excavated by Guo Dashun in the early 90's and the actual report by Guo on the site are the difference between a political 'feel-good' spin and a unemotional 'let facts speak for themselves'. The newspaper versions were wild and fanciful about the sites nature, and leads to myths about the number of jades found with burials and the type of society there, which is quite wrong in reality compared to the number of graves.
Others figures on sites provided by some Chinese newspapers can be next to useless for a real understanding of the sites in similar ways.
I should be clear I find some very good too! and pictures of excavations or objects in tombs (and stories of tomb robbing) can often be quite fair and truthfull, but others are not. I suggest thinking a little about what these articles about 'mummies' need to take into account a little more than what some newsboy wants to entertain his reader with. (some of the better articles I have I will post here shortly).

This mercury and cinnabar mummy idea will be more halftruth...as it will be her medicine for the afterlife....and poisonous and ineffective (both for as a cure and for mummification).
There was an idea mercury strengthened the body and could help create immortal body parts by replacing internal organs (but it doesn't)......but just like the complex Jade burial suits of the Han emperors the ideas of what preserved a body in Han were quite spurious in ineffective. These burial suits are said to take 10 yars to make, and joined the plates with gold thread or silk, but all that remaines is the suit as the body decays despite the thinking of the time.
It was JADE that thought to preserve bodies, and jade orifice plugs and burial masks exist from West Zhou...and by Han these more complex suits evolved as are found in the royal tombs around Xian, and a famous example in the Han King of Nanyues tomb in Ghuangzhou. There are beautiful matching suits for women too. Quite ineffective unfortunately. I think the Eypgtians can't be relegated to second place for mummification just yet no matter how much 'feel good' factor is involved.
If Chinese mummies need to be studied then the mummies of Xinjiang should be studied, as they are even older...from Shang to Warrign States. The earliest ones are Caucasian, but by the later period CHinese mummies are found in the same graveyeards showing the communities had joined.
The central plains HAn did not mummify, and the article that begun this post is another example of a blending of fact with half truth by some Chinese newspapers, it makes a distorted story with ludicrous claims that Chinese mummification is more advanced than Eypgt.
The author is being liberal with the facts, to put it kindly.
I will re-watch my documentary on the Lady too (although it isnt very nice to watch) but it will just confirm what my quoted text has said. Some of her ineffective Chinese medicine found in the tomb. It is NOT the cause of the preservation, as her pork & fish dinners and silk garments etc. were not taking this medecine as well, and yet they survived in the tomb atmosphere.
Think about it, and beware of some Chinese newspapers for good and fair details of discoveries.

Note, not all tombs were as lucky as this one.

I did a little more research and I found the same mounds that held the Lady held the graves of her husband and adult son.
The husband, Prime Minister Li Cang, had died 18 years earlier and the son died in the same year as Lady Xin. (around 168BC).
The contents shown of the other 2 tombs were immense wooden coffins and 2 incomplete piles of bone....ribs, a pelvis and a few long bones.
It shows that even the son buried in the same year and the same mound did not have the luck of the clay & charcoal seal to his tomb and he rotted normally.
Further evidence it was the tomb conditions alone are in the pictures I see of the meals left for the LAdy, dessicated meats are stiloll rocognisable, and even the plums and pears look quite intactand just a little withered. Meats could be identified from the bamboo slips that list the tombs contents...although for some reason the listed vessel of horsemeat (a Han favourite) is missing. Some of the meat include deer, dog, beef lips and tongue, chicken drumsticks, fish (carp, bream, perch and mandarin fish), lamb, hare, goose, duck, pheasant, turtledove, sparrow (!), owl, crane, eggs, and spareribs.
Spices and honey, soy and salt, rice, wheat , lentils, lotus root, strawberries, dates, plums, etc etc.
Even the clothing on the wooden servant dummies has survived, the laquerware is lustrous as the day it was sealed inside the crypt.

It is absolutely clear that the crypt condition is what preserved all these items. Her familys tombs even beside her in similar condiotions and depth (which are contemporary) show that her preservation is an act of tremendous luck, and not one the neighbouring tombs shared which must have not have been airtight.

There is much more of informative worth in this tomb for studying the Han period than turning it into a case misguided cultural competition by this ill-informed reporter.

are there available pics of the tomb items, e.g. the food

There is the museum showing stuff of the Marquis of Dai: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2...tent_337608.htm

Anyways, I think Xin Zhui looks pretty.

Yes, Noob, there are images of the desicated food and the layout of the tomb including dishes and cutlery.
I will post a couple of pictures soon.

It seems tht there is a confusion of the definition of mummification and preservation here.

Egyptians mummified their dead, which implies a manual manipulation of the corpse -- removal of internal organs(brain, heart, liver, lung, etc), drying/salting out the body(dehydraytion), and spice applying on the skin. Combine with the ENVIRONMENTAL condition of their area(hot, dry) preservation of corpses are easily accomplished contrasting with other cultural where their surroundings are more humid and soil is more acidic(desert have sands and rocks mostly duh!)

Preservation of corpses, are the one you mentioned in XingJiang, these golden "mummies" were called as such because they looked like a mummified corpse in Egypt, but the dehhdration/salting/drying effect is not artifical, there were buried according to their nomadic ritual, and the preservation took places by the natural surroundings of their burial sites. Do you call them mummies? To the ordinary public Yes, to the academic no I don't think they are classified that way, well at least they should be called natural mummies to be PC.

So back to the topic, the lady we are talking about here is WELL preserved. It is not dry though as the body exihibit elasticity after almost 2000 years, which to me is simply amazing! If what you say is true about the internal organs and contents of stomach still remain intact then it is even more amazing! Environmental factors may play a great part but there has to be more than that. Why?

human body temp is 37 degree, which is also bacteria's optimal temp(guess why).
24 hrs after a person stop breathing, decomposition already kick started within a person's own body -- by his/her own bacteria/parasites. This is the main reason why mummification won't work if you do not remove the organs!! The only way I know exist to preserve the whole body -- is by liquid nitrogen or intense, short interval freezing shortly after death(within 24hours). The mammoths are examples -- they froze to death by a sudden blizzard while chewing flowers in the tundra, became a frozen block in a matter of hours.

Here, the lady corpse is obviously not frozen, the mysterious liquid which I cannot confirm some sourse say they found in her coffin is possibly the key. Did she consume a potion(which is unlikely to be 6 gallons of elixir just happen to have preservation effect, try drinking formalin)? Was she prepared differently than her husband due to a special liquid applied to her coffin? We will never know.

One thing of note is that mercury, which is the only liquid metal you see at room temp, does have a very good preservation effect, at even low concentration, mercury is extremely toxic to both humans, insects and bacteria. heated mercury oxidized and become Mercury Oxide which is also a poisonous gas! If the liquid surrounding the corpse's tomb has a high concentration of mercury when it was unearthed -- think of the concentration 2000 years ago!!!

Finally, if you talk about a preserved corpse as a mummy then lady Ma should be classified as a mummy then, whether she is an artifical mummy or a natural mummy remain to be seen. There are natural mummies in Chile also and along the Andies, Just because lady ma is chinese does not kick her out of the "best preserved mummies" contest in the world. Academics don't care about such claims anyway.

I do think she is the best preserved human remain today, according to my definition of what a mummy is.

She IS the best preserved human body from that period, up until modern times at least.

If you guys could provide some info on the "Stone Monk" from the Tang dynasty, which is about 1000 years later, she would have a competitor. The "Stone Monk" was smuggled to Japan during WWII, the temple chief murdered, and he is now being shown in a coastal city of Japan, but I am not sure. I really do hate the Japanese though, even if you discount the WWII war crimes, crimes such as these are worth "10000" deaths

I have seen her in person when she and her husband were shipped to Taiwan National Palace Museum for display.

She was so ugly and her belly were coming out, her lips busted and her teeth also protruding.

It said on the guide that the Chinese Mummification didn't remove the internal organs. The bacteria inside produced great amount of gas and the pressure is what pushed out her belly, then opened up her mouth and busted her teeth.

Oh, i forget, the gas also pushed out her eye balls.

Great to hear that update!

SO there was decomposition immediately after her death, starting from the internal organs. You can say that they didn't perpare(or the body wasn't prepare) well though as its been 2000 years dude what do u expect?

Bacterial decomposition starts within hours after death and is extremely hard to avoid!! Try preparing a 500lb cow with organs still inside!, one afternoon, at 25-35 degree range is enough to foul the whole carcass.

We as of 2005 still do not have a good way to stop bodies from decoposing short of deep freezing! And profusion of formaline works best with internal oragns removed or combined with a mechanical Pump, otherwise fixative just don't get into the oragns to do the job right!

As a scientist I define perfect fixation of tissue by complete perfusion of the bodies blood vessels by fixatives and also complete difusion of fixative to the tissues of mucles and organs(just like blood going through ur entire body while u r living)

Lady Ma's condition is marvelous given the situation -- not that I want to make out with her! But she body is not far from perfectly preserved, if u compare her to egyptian mummies. The better ones would be found with global warming getting worse and u start seeing frozen dead from blizzards in Seberia I guess.

Kelvin, you miss my point.
While the post prompting article has a bad pun about 'Chinese perservation leaves eygptians for dead' this is a shameful half truth.
Yes, she is preserved. No fooling...but was there a real active technique? No.
The Han burial practices do not support that inthe slightest.
I still havent got round to posting those pics of the food on plates and baskets, as I am working on several other threads...but think about it. The fruit and the cuts of meat didnt drink her magic Chinese medicine (which includes some of the more mundane ingredients I listed above).
The preservation is entirely due to the local conditions of her tomb and those that buried her were unaware she would be preserved differently to the son and husband beside her (who rotted normally).
The contents of the tomb, the silk and laquerware were preserved too. They weren't mummified in any preservation technique either.
Thanks for the tidbits of info, and the argument over semantics....but it is clear she is a preserved corpse and yet shouldnt be inadequetely compared to Eygptian techniques at all (nor should the Eygptians be belittled).
She is more comparible to bodies recovered from European peat swamps who were left as sacrifice, and the propertys of the peat swamp preserved them accidently. No, they arent called mummies either in literature. Some of them are also older (many centuries BC) than this lady.
You attempt to split hairs over dictionary definitions is unnessecary however, as there are natural mummies and prepared mummies. That is clear and undeniable. Both the Xianjiang, or for instance the Peruvian mummies you refer to, fit the later criteria as the people were aware of this process and exploited it.
Yes, mummies can be accidental too, freeze dried or dehydrated, but my objection is ONLY to the confused articles reasoning behind claiming the Han developed superior preservation techniques.
For the most part the Han era idea of preserving the body was thought be be by using jade, but the main fixation was on providing tomb objects (servants & luxuries) for the deceased to enjoy in the afterlife. The afterlife was viewed as a mirror image of the material world, and so the rich wanted to 'take it with them'. Thsi is what makes tombs from the period a tremendous record of the material culture (particularily due to ceramic images taken from life, houses, farms, animals, warriors, servants, musicians etc.) These objects were also placed inLady Dais tomb...they were wooden, and survived due to the unusual tomb atmposhere.
Here are some plain facts for you;
.....shortly after the date at which Lady Dai was buried the Han Chinese switched from these 'shaft' burials to a more complex 'chamber' burial, so her own method of tomb was shortly discontinued. Such a find is very very rare understandably, even from the over one thousand years of shaft burials preceding it.
There wasnt any successful way to preserve bodies during Han, although erroneously Jade was thought to prevent body corruption and also trap the 'breath of life' that may have still remained in the corpse. Even since West ZHou there were funerary masks of jade (of which images from Han jades are easiest to find), and during Han there were burial pigs/crouching pigs of jade, as well as body apperture plugs and jade cicadas etc.
All of these were funerary items, and ineffective due to flawed Daoist logic.
i.e Both the pills given to QIn SHi Huang, and testing of those 'immortality pills' recovered from the King of Nanyues tomb (who had rotted to dust when opened) shows the ingredients had the opposite effect and may well have caused their deaths
The height of this erroneous jade=incorruptability logic resultied in striking Han jade burial suits, which were reserved for Emperors, but the defiant King of Nanyue in Guangzhou was buried in one too. These are often shown in history texts on the period also.
Han ideas of preservation were thoroughly flawed...and any such finds as above are a lucky fluke, just as are discoveries of intact wood objects in tombs that have been flooded below the water table (like pictured above).
Local conditions only. A fluke. I am not saying she isnt preserved, but that there was no 'advanced technique' as was the premise of the article.
I hope this is now clear enough.
If any of the above about the construction of Han era tombs based on excavation, or the idea of Jades properties, or the finding of Han funerary objects to preserve the corpse needs referencing back to texts then I can supply them.....but a simple google search should also confirm some of the above concepts of burial during Han as it is commonly reffered to.
To quote the song; 'Dont believe the hype'. Preserved, Yes.....advanced preservation technique? No.
Like a can of tinned food, once the tomb is opened she begins to rot. The element of competition between nationalties and which 'mummies' are best is just a spin by some journalist.
I have seen many references to this tomb find before for studies of the ancient dynasties, and they simply value it as a wonderful time capsule. ANy point scoring between civilsations is a sad digression, and also a pretty flawed one based on what I have just listed above...all common knowledge to any researcher of the Han material culture.

PS; as far as real mummies, and the peat corpses go this is neither the best nor the oldest preserved corpse in the world either.

You go Kenneth.

To follow your point and also quote from the song "cause Leehom makes no stereotype."

er.......ok.
I was actually quoting the Public Enemy song by the same name.
I must be showing my age as that was nearly 20 years ago.
..still, that Leehom fellow looks like a very nice young man indeed!

Oh yeah sorry Kenneth, After reading in detail what you had posted. I did missed your point!!

Oh well the media often comes up with bizzare ways of presenting "facts" to catch the public's attention. I don't blame them too much though as they need an eye-catching title to identify with the dis-interested public about an important archeaological find.

It is not as embarassiing as you may think cause many countries/cultures media boast news such as these up their national image and raise public attention.

For those who are true academics in the field know all too well to ignore the media hype, for those who are really interested in the truth look up the details and end up in discussion board like this one. So the fact that we are discussing this topic is already a good sign I see as the story reporting success.

The general public who don't give a **** will forget about this in less than a week. You do have to understand that in mainland china nowadays ppl are a lot more materialistic than the CCP would like to acknowledge.

I personally have read excepts from archeaologists working around the 3 gorges rescue project and from what I've read they avoid the local news media like the plague because what they found as facts could be completely twisted to make fairy tales the next day.

As for the semeitcs of the word " mummy" I was simply trying to show that, even without proper body preservation, the lady Ma could is still a mummy--aka preserved body. The fact that it was natural surrounding/condition and not human tampering is beyond the point.

Comparing between egyptian mummies with this one out right is not appropiate, but the state of the corpse is "INDEED" superb and much more information could be collected from lady ma's body.

I can see your anger at how news reporters invention can mis-inform the public, but if you go check out the polictical forum for a while I am sure you would find out that this mummy report is but a mockery compare to the "other" news coming out from XingHua News.

Alternatively I could relate my numerous embarassing experiences as I was watching TV in China with my US friends and see the CNN news got censored and a chinese slogan floating out as replacement 3 times within the hour. Or that Taiwanese parliemen *****-slapping each other on World TV news. What can I say we Chinese have no shame now, much like the rest of the world

heheh.
Interesting what you say about the three gorges project. The whole affair was a tragedy for history due to underfunding of rescue archaeology....anouncing finds to the local media could have also resulting in spates of looting also as I have heard shocking stories from that area in the past.
Yeah, I am sure the Chinese media is not the only media in the world guilty of this 'hyping of the ancestors'...but a lot of the headlines that seem to appear here, and on other forums, discussing the latest discoveries generally aren't fit for an article in 'TV guide'.

It is true exactly what is a 'mummy' isn't really relevant to the value of such finds. Thanks for your comments.

There's 2 definitions to Mummy.
1. Preserved bodies that underthrough the ancient Egyptian process
2. Otherwise preserved bodies that resemble those that had been embalmed.

IMO, mummification requires:
1. Embalming
2. Deliberate actions of preservation (spices, sand, taking out internal organs and putting them in jars etc)

In this sense the Chinese burial rites include:
1. Washing the body
2. Suiting the body
3. And burying the body.
More attention was given to step 3.
Frankly speaking, I personally don't think that the Lady Dai body was a mummy either. A body preserved through enbalming would be withered. I would expect mummy-like bodies to be unearthed around Xinjiang since the environment would be more similar to that of preservation through enbalming (dry sands etc). The secret ingredient is a salt that soaks up the available fluids in the body and retarding decomposition.

Bodies discovered in the peat bogs were actually BETTER PRESERVED than enbalmed bodies. In this case, the means of retarding decay was anoxic environment.

I finally was taking some picture out of a text for images of Han tombs and remembered I was supposed to post this;


...and here is one of the interior chambers drapped in silk with meals sitting on plates with chopsticks.


I will be posting a thread on silk traces on ancient bronze artefacts based on this tomb image as an example.
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...=0#entry4746451

NGS 's DIVA MUMMY shown the other day led me to bring up this issue once again. Without much detail and info I was skeptical about the preservation of the Chinese lady Dai as a per chance event. However, watching the show last night, which showed footage of the chinese film of the autopsy of not only her, but 2 more corpses, one man and one woman, buried within the Yantze River valley some 100 miles apart(the new one in 2002). They all seems to be floating in a mysterious liquid. It was shown in the show that this liquid was recorded to be used and poured into the coffin before it was being sealed. The body was also wrapped up by 20 layer of silk(tightly), ourside the 7 layer lacquered coffin charcoal was used to fill the tomb, then a clay layer to absorb moisture, then soil on top to build a mound. By the archaeologist and narrator there clearly was a protocol, at least a school of protocol/method, maybe practiced by a particular sect of priest/monks(?). As clearly you don't see the same treatment being done to a prince/kings tomb and many other corpses rotted away. Notice that the humid and exteme weather in the Yantze River makes it one of the worst place to preserve a corpse naturally. However, people obviously had some intelligence into combating this as they build the tomb in an inversted pyramid shape, bring the temp of the tomb to a much lower temperature(shown on TV this kind of chamber act as local refrigerator to store banannas.

My conclusion with the information I got after watching this show is that, all the techniques could not explain the elasticity and perfect preservation of the corpse(with oragn and even blood intact -- man's blood was drawn and determined to be AB, in the SHOW). The liquid was the Key. All three were discovered to be "floating" in this un-name liquid. But the composition result, at least preliminary, seems to be of a different sources. I do not buy the idea that its a natural underground seeping of water, for it brings bacteria and the integraty of the corpse will not hold for 2000 years, all your cells will expand and the shape of the corpse will not look like what you see on TV. I also caution the natural preservation theory now because when I come to think of it, natural causes has a larger scale, there should have been more than 3 corpses found by now, probably an entire region with many more corpses, old and new, would have been discovered to have the same phenotype/properties. Not only in CHina, but a lot more places in the world.

My question here is directed to Kenneth, whom I respect as one of the best expert on this site in the subjet of mummies and this topic. Can you share your thought based on this info? Do you still hold your original hypothesis? What do you think of the archaeologist and expert being interviewed in the show. They seem to be to be just as clueless as we watching the show, not much definitive answers. Oh well I missed the last 5 mins.

Interesting that the chinese scientist are already experimenting with a 700 yr old corpse for some years by remaking a solution similar to the liquid found in the tomb. Seems like they had some success.

Is this China's oldest mummy ??

http://china-empire.blogspot.com/2005/10/a...nese-mummy.html

Lady Dai is not the oldest, nor is she a deliberate mummification. There was even recently a Ching era preserved corpse found in a sealed tomb. The facts that food and wood & textiles in Lady Dai's tomb are preserved while her son and husband beside nearby decayed away to a few scraps of bone shows it was the lucky tomb conditions that preserved her. Han ideas about decay were based on jade, and were quite ineffective.
The Xinjiang mummies are true mummies and are much older. Unlike Lady Dai whose tongue swells grotesquely the Xinjiang mummies had the jaws bound shut (to appear more natural) since they actually planned the process. The earliest causcasian mummies in the region are much older than the Han period, (Shang & West Zhou) even by the East Zhou period Asian folk had mixed with the caucasians there and the mummies occur of both races. Even these Chinese Xinjiang mummies are much older than lady Dai.

The 'mysterious liquid' is not reffered to in anything I have seen. She was buried with her traditional Chinese medicine which was to treat her heart disease, and was ineffective. I dont know about the other bodies but to suggest a 'mystery liquid' is simply just a distraction from other causes. It is odd if it hasn't had a geuss made about what it is since it would change the way we embalm bodies today if true. It just sounds like a tall tale to me.
The pictures I have of the tomb or other burials do not suggest a mystery liquid, although in the south of China (i.e Yangtse) there are many tombs below the water table and pictures of them full of water are common, items floating in water, archaeologists up to knees in water...etc. This is likely why they seal the tomb with clay and charcoal and so trapped in a cool and dry enviroment.
When people first opened the tomb a visible blue gas escaping frightened them, it was organic matter and the sealed oxegen deprived enviroment escaping.
The burial of Lady Dai has not been commented on as remarkable either in the layered coffin, the tomb size or mound or the treatment of the body before. The chance sealed enviroment of the whole tomb did the work, not any special treatment of the body.
i.e Did the pears and cuts of meat left in her tomb get wrapped in seven layers of silk and sealed in liquid?
(Click to enlarge)

No.
They were on the plates and yet were preserved intact by happy enviromental chance, even fruit. This is why the silk and wooden figures and all sorts were preserved too, despite being outside the coffin.

It seems quite clear.The only thing known about body preservation in Han...as practiced by Emperors and their family....were the ineffectual but beautiful jade suits. Jade plugs and masks were used from Zhou times to prevent decay. This is what the Han put faith in. The concept of body decay was totally different to our own.
I havent seen the 'mystery liquid' but a TV documentary would not be the last word. That bit about the pyramids/cooler temperatures seems to suggest that they are trying deduce reasons that aren't nessecary either. Tombs contemporary vary in mound shape, domes, four sides, wide, tall etc. It is like people saying the pyramids shape even sharpens a knife if you leave it underneath, or that it naturally creates electricity too. Kind of wierd nobody uses it.
There is no need for any mystery technology after all. Take a look at the pictures of the tomb. One good source is a book 'China's Buried Kingdoms' which explains the mechanism of sealed enviroment quite well. The family tombs of her husband and son beside her were excavated and they were only scraps of bone left since they hadn't sealed successfully in the same manner. It all seems to suggest the mystery preserving liquid doesnt exist in the face of the evidence of the tomb itself and neither was either wrapping in silk, layered coffins, or tomb mounds part of the process.
The purpose of the tomb mounds is not to lower temperatures undergound. It dates from before Han and is an attempt to recreate the mountains where immortals dwell, and reach heaven more easily. The Han era ones are even known to have been modelled on auspicious mountains (i.e, named within Maoling). A look at funerary objects like Han bronze incense burners and ceramic storage jars show a repeating mountain/immortal theme in the art.
The layered coffins are common even well after Han, as well as the same tomb mounds...yet there is a distinct lack of preserved corpses. Layering in silk seems common too since bronze items from tombs often have contact or signs of being wrapped in textiles.
Short answer to the question....if the documentary hinges on a 'mystery liquid then it seems quite unnessacry and untill it is even identified then it isn't time to assume a mystery ingredient did the work.
...wouldn't preserved bodies be a little more common if this was true? Wouldn't there be more than a handful found and the family members of Lady Dai (i.e the Marquis) who died only a short time after her wanted to use the same 'liquid' that clearly they knw about?
Wouldn't, if it was a cultural technique, these sort of preserved bodies appear in clusters within burial sites instead of a few out of these hundreds of thousands of tombs excavated, accidently discovered, or looted?
I will await the documentary on NG channel here. It seems odd nobody noticed or commented on the liquid Lady Dai was soaked in untill now. Did it ooze out of those other bodies AFTER the tomb was opened? I have been told that spirit money is placed around the body coffins in traditional burials even in modern times since the body is thought to ooze fluid. I don't know if it does but this is a practice I have been told by Chinese.
It raises a lot of questions.

Edit;
...one interesting thing.
She was buried at the time of Wendi when gold and jade was forbidden as a tomb object by the frugal Emperor (the mortuary industry was draining a lot of valuables). She had other objects like wooden servants and silks as a substitute. Would there have been experiments beyond jade as a preservative?...a mystery elixir?
The thing that suggests the full story is not being told on NG is that the charcoal layer and construction was mentioned elsewhere, but it was never said to be unique or even commented as different when they examined her husband and son or other tombs. Her tomb just seems to have sealed better than usual in that case.
The Ching preserved corpse that surfaced recently was only just over 100 years old and it turned yellow and waxen once exposed to air. It suggests in that case the body is not preserved at all and the enviroment did the work. Once the seal was broken the decay begins, within hours. Maybe the body then oozes fluid as it decays. The change in colour and muscle tone suggests the change in enviroment resumes the decay. (see CHF thread http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=10236)

Any mystery fluid should not be a mystery for long if found in 2002, or Lady Dai was more like 20 years ago IIRC. Why are the people in the white coats with microscopes still without a conclusion? It seems to suggest that the mystery liquid is a bit if a tall tale.....why can't a chemist isolate each ingredient? Unless I see the bodies inside the coffins 'swimming' in a liquid then I find it hard to believe this was even the case.
The should be no mystery either way....unless the mystery is more interesting than the truth for a documentary.

....I hope it comes on National Geographic channel here. I hope. I wanna see the corpses.
Untill they explain what was in the liquid, or how it is supposed to work, then I don't assume this liquid is an explanation in itself.

The restoration statue is very beautiful. Great clothes! Anyways, does anybody have any more pictures of the Lady Dai besides the main one. Also, anybody have any of those pictures of the other people who were in a state of similar preservation (2 others).

Does anybody know where I can see that movie Diva Mummy maybe online? Also, I read somewhere that chopsticks were found in the tomb anybody got pictures of those? That is amazing 2000+ year old chopsticks! I still use chopsticks today cool.

Look at the black & white picture from the tomb I posted above, click to enlarge it & you can see the bowls and chopsticks there.
Han chopsticks look just like 'modern' chopsticks anyway.

The label says "....chicken drumsticks, spareribs and morsels of fish.......Slender chopsticks neatly lined up, lie ready to be lifted by a ghostly hand."

The Shang had ivory chop sticks and examples from the Han period in bronze have been shown to me(unprovenenced items but certainly that ancient).
At all these times the wooden chopsticks would have been around and more common than bronze or ivory but they have only rarely survived in unusual conditions, such as the conditions of this tomb which preserved the meat on the plates in the same manner it preserved silk, fruits and even the Lady.
Wood decays away in most situations but we still have enough evidence to show that chopsticks existed from ancient times.

The restoration {drawing} might be 'beautiful' but it is wrong.

I have written a lot on Lady Dai, but she was old, bent and sick when she died. The skull was not defleshed for restoration (as measurements are needed from a bare skull) but perhaps a CT scan and then a model skull produced by this could allow for reconstruction. But why reconstruct her as a young maiden?. Because it's 'nice'?
Lady Dai (she seems to be refered to as Lady Dai {the Lady of Dai?} or Lady Xin equally) was a bent old woman when she died, walked with a cane and and had several health compliants. Heart disease was the killer. Her medicine was ineffective and there is no reason to assume this somehow preserved her.
I believe I listed all this from the autopsy earlier.
She is even shown on a silk painting in her own tomb, a long silk banner, and this shows her as an old woman (with a slight neck deformation due to age) being attended by young ladies.
She wasn't a lovely maiden.
The picture then is basically silly IMO.

I have pictures of what she looks like now in some books at home, and she is clearly an accidental preservation with her swollen toungue and equally preserved tomb contents (compared to her totally decayed husband and son).
She needs to be stored with great care in modern times since she is not preserved in the true sense and needs a very special enviroment.
She is not very aesthetically pleasing compared to other true mummies or preserved corpses even if she is amazing.
Here is an image off the web, but I have seen others equally un-elegant.
It all goes to show, don't believe everything you see & read.



Maybe I'll add some pictures later of her body, and the Han painting of what she looked like.
She wasn't a hottie.

Re; very beautiful.
Will the real Lady Xin please stand up?
Well, she did so with a cane and had the bent frame of an old woman.
This is her depicted on a long painted silk banner from her tomb.



...and this is her when being examined by morticians. She had consumed a meal of watermelon just before her heart attack and over 100 seeds were found in her stomach. A lot was learnt about her health by studying the heart, intestines, lungs and stomach.
Typically deliberate mummifaction involves removal (some or all) of the internal organs (i.e Eygptian as well as some steppes and pre-Colombian cultures), as these are a source of decay since bacterial action dissolves the flesh. Another suggestion body this was not mummified as such.
She requires much care in storage to make sure decay does not resume. Note the picture of the corpse earlier shows the sealed case which keeps her in a special enviroment.
There is no suggestion she wouldnt decay if she was left in the open air, just like a steak thawing out too long on the kitchen bench.



To show the chopsticks more clearly, and the preservation of organic objects in the remarkable enviroment of the tomb, these are a preserved wooden lacquerware set from the Marquise of Dai's tomb.

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.

I have seen the picture of what see looks like at 50 years of age there were 3 pictures (young girl, young woman, 50 years old). I think I read somewhere that she was considered a beauty maybe when she was young. Anyways the picture on the silk banner doesn't show us what she looked like at 26. Could have been just like the statue. I really actually don't think the the body itself looks that great especially the face but the hair looks pretty well done. Nice bowls and chopsticks wow 2000+ years old amazing!!!! Any ancient chopsticks made out of bamboo?

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.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?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 . http://www.chinamuseums.com/changsham.htm



#6

ls." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawangdui ..... http://www.chinamuseums.com/changsham.htm

#10 (To illustrate that there is debate here, and while some focus on mystery elements others point to the tomb conditions.)

. http://gannsdeen.wordpress.com/2006/11/29/...ering-lady-dai/

http://english.people.com.cn/200408/25/eng...825_154710.html


http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1393

*** (see point 10 above) 2002 Expanding on the 'mystery elixir' and the idea the 2 compounds so far found are very different and both are not even confirmed as preservatives. Huiping Ling and Lady Xin finds have some real differences if you compare the below,


http://www.mummytombs.com/news/2002/7.china.han3.htm



2006

....It is also the first wet corpse found to the north of Yangtze River in China ....
Yingshihttp://www.chinacov.com/EN/displaynews.asp?id=102




http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e200311/p68.htm

I agree with you at all that the main means of preservation was the method how she was entombed (i.e., how she was buried), not how her body was treated or prepared.

I am also not convinced by this mysterious liquid angle, since even the scientists are not in agreemetn on it. So I agree with you on that count.

I don't agree with the fact that if the body was removed from its buried environment, it decayed, then it is not a mummy. By taking the body out of its intended environment, you are changing the conditions for its preservation, so of course it is going to rot. This is no different from the Alps mummy found frozen several years back. It rotted as soon as it was unfrozen (but that is an unintended mummification.

As to the rarity of success, creating a sealed environment is extremely difficult. That counts for the high failure rates. Even by today's technology, it would be extremely to create a sealed environment for 2000 years.

No one ever intended for the tomb to be disturbed, and the body taken out of its environment like that. It was meant to be preserved for eternity in its original environment, alongside the preserved meat, fruites, cloths etc., that was to accompany her in afterlife. Even the Egyptian mummies were intened to be left in its original location, not to be disturbed. The major differance is that the Egyptians did not depend on the burial method for mummification, but actually treated the body itself.

Maybe we are having a disagreement on the definition of "mummification." I take a broader view and more layman's view, and perhaps not supported by the general scientific community.

By taking such elaborate measures, Lady Dai's relatives intended to preserve her body, and not allow it to rot away. (of course with the jade preservation concept, they were totally off their rocker). This was why I had said that the mummification was deliberate. Perhaps I should have said deliberate preservation, rather than mummification? Would that we more accurate?

As I understand it, since a preserved corpse is a lot broader and could include the iceman, Yuri and Celtic bog people and such.
Still some versions if internet discussion call Yuri a 'mummy' too.
I think I prefer the term 'preserved corpse' but arguing over the appropriate meaning isn't so important as investigating the physical aspects of this, compared to other cultural examples.
The 'deliberate or not' debate here at least made me learn a little more about these preserved bodies today.

I tend to think that so much care was put into the tomb that preservation was a very very rare bi-product rather than a real aim.
The abandonment of shaft burials such as this in Eastern Han would suggest this as well as that the people above ground have no real way of knowing if it works or not.
If Chinese preserved meats over winter in such a fashion then there would be some way to see how the process was discovered and then applied, but as it is it seems to me to be a one in a million thing.

It isn't important for this to be completely agreed on but when headlines hype this example I think it is turned into something more than a scientific miracle and more a way of instilling a sense of 'one-up-manship'.
That's about the only negative aspect of the debate and coverage.

A mummy is simply a dried up corpse.

Mummification, on the other hand, is the process intended to dessicate and preserve the corpse. Lady Dai was preserved, but it was the combination of sealing the tomb (which had a low chance of success considering the other failed attempts) and the dry and arid environmental conditions that ultimately caused her preservation--not human intentions. Without these conditions, her tomb would have only preserved the artifacts and not the corpse.

On a side note, when I visited her preserved body in Changsha, I tried for over a half an hour to snap a picture of her. But the guard was exceptional and followed me wherever I went, so I left with only memories. The exhibit was wonderful though, especially the exquisite silks and lacquerware.

The same factors produced the famous Caucasoid 'Tarim mummies'.

They aren't the same. The Tarim mummies were deliberate and dessicated by the arid enviroment in a conscious process that was repeated for centuries. The mouths were tied shut to prevent the toungues swelling and creating an undignified look such as Lady Dai so they clearly viewed the bodies after the primary burial. Bodies could have been preserved and then reburied or moved about if the settlement moved. It is by practicing secondary burials that it is thought mummifaction in deserts was first accidently discovered and then exploited.
Lady Dai's tomb was cool, uniquely stable and oxegen starved. It should not be called arid. It is a different mechanism which prevented decay & one which left the flesh supple & seems it was not intentional (or at the very least was unsucessful 99.99% of the time).
Unlike the Tarim mummies though if a person dug up lady Dai and then treked for a week with a body on the back of a mule the 'Han preserved corpses' would not arrive to civilisation in the same state as when they left.
Consider the difference between beef jerky, or in China a 'beef paper', and then compare it to a snap frozen steak that you take from the freezer and put it on the bench.
Put the 2 side by side and check back in a week.
Only mummified bodies like the Tarim mummies would remain crunchy and delicious. Lady Dai would be difficult to approach, and probably quite different to behold (green & oozing).
There are many distinct differences here that can be percieved without destructive testing. The Han simply didnt mummify people.

(even though this tiopic post is old I thought I might revive it)

From what I understand the mummy was preserved in mercury sulphide solution of some sort. It had high levels of mercury in the yellowish brown liquid.

I have heard of cases of people (in Europe) being preserved with arsenic.
There are also cases of religious Catholic saints/Nuns who had died and their bodies did not decade.

(note some sensitive members might not like to see this site because there are some pictures of dead bodies of the saints shown)
http://members.chello.nl/~l.de.bondt/IncorruptBodies.htm

Heres another site
http://members.aol.com/ccmail/incorruptbodies.htm

I am curious Freddy1,

how did you know that she was preserved in mercury sulfide? There was a liquid (some say an elixir) in her tomb, but I was under the impression that scientists did not know or could not agree what the mysterious liquid was.

And, I believe that the liquid was outside the body, not inside the body. Is that correct?

If I recall correctly I read the mercury sulfide account from Professor Joseph Needham. It might have been in his book titled "The Genius of China".*
*(Now there might be other substances mixed in with the liquid which I am not sure about. I'm sure a mass spectrometer analysies would at least be able to identify some of the rudimentry chemical composition of the liquid material.)

From the accounts I have read over the years I believe she was submerged in the liquid. The entire coffin was filled with the liquid.
I have seen pictures where they have autopsy parts of her body like her intestines, stomach. I believe the liquid was both inside and outside her body.

There are also two other mummies preserved in a similar fashion but there isnt much information about them comming out from what I know. ( I think one was discover just a few year ago)

The Caucasian peoples of Xinjiang, who were known the Chinese as the Yuezhi, certainly did practise mummification, and they understood its principles over 4,000 years ago. For the record, they did not remove the internal organs.

Well reserved Yuezhi mummies are invariably buried wrapped in warm clothes. Those ones which were not well preserved were dressed in lighter weight clothes. The conclusion which we can draw from this is that those bodies which were buried in winter at shallow depth were quickly frozen, thus preventing the process of bacteriological decay. The bodies were also buried in conditions which allowed air to circulate over salt rich soil. This sucked the moisture out of the bodies, allowing natural mummification to take place.

We know that the Yuezhi understood mummification because of the use of chin straps to prevent "mummy gape", and because of the deliberate use of trenches under the bodies to maximise the flow of drying air.

Could it have been that the Marchioness Dai was buried in a particularly cold winter, so that the body underwent some sort of freezing, with mummification then being aided by some other circumstances?

I don't recall Needham writing about the liquid (though his Science and Technology volume is HUGE) and I went through Temple's abridgment, "The Genius of China", and couldn't find any references... Really, I hope I'm wrong because that would clear up this mystery (at least it's a mystery to me).

In Changsha, I've seen the organs that are displayed around the room in formaldehyde filled jars. Interesting really. I also saw the excavation process on National Geographic and the preservation liquid was red. Some of the scientists said that there may be cinnabar within the liquid (which would make sense given its supposed mythical properties), though they said the exact contents of the liquid were inconclusive.

And you're right, there was another body excavated from the same time period (160 B.C. or so) near Lady Dai's tomb along the Yangtze, and there was another Han tomb excavated along China's coast with a similar liquid. Here's an article that claims the liquid from that third tomb was "alkalescent" and is in need of further analysis:


Still, a mystery to me (if I find more, I'll post)

It was years ago that I read about it. I cant for sure recall any other sources that I read it from so I could have forgotten.
It could have been in Needham's "The shorter Science and civilisation in China" (3 volumes) because I know I did borrow it from the library. Other than that I can recall any other sources that I might have read the accounts from.
I almost certain it stated "mercury sulphide or mercury sulfide" and the mummy was in a liquid solution.


From what I could remember from the book(s) mentioned it was a brownish yellowish liquid. I have not heard or seen it red befor. That is new to me.
I do remember seeing a docuemntry about it a number of years ago. Maybe it was the National Geographic one.
If there was any mercury in that liquid it should be easy to analyse.



I'm glad you found an artticle about the other body Publius! I recall there were 3 bodies found in total now.

Yes please do post up more info. if you find any. I''ll do the same.

I have a picture of the coffin of Lady Dai when it was opened, with her corpse still inside and surrounded by silk, and she was not floating in any noticable quantity of liquid. It can't have been much more than when somebody wets the bed.
She may have been washed when she was a corpse before being dressed and put in the coffin, and this solution have been found on the skin surface. It was not an embalming. A liquid may have oozed out of the body while it was being lifted out (since it was not a quick removal). That it can't be identified simply means they havent adequetely tried since I doubt any substance could defeat a competent chemist forever.
Applying compounds like mercury sulphide (this is cinnabar) to objects in tombs was standard from the time of the Neolithic & Shang. I have objects with what seems to be cinnabar on them, and I handle them carefully for this reason. Coffins were liberally coating with the same material in Shang tombs. Cinnabar is found on textiles, coins, jades etc. etc. Finding it on Lady Xin is no sign of a mystery elixer. It was used like an ochre (as it looks much the same, red, except toxic). Covering objects with cinnabar was very popular. I doubt anyone would attribute anything incredible like preserved corpses to such a compound (mercury sulphide) and certainly not with any good cause if they did.

Let's put the hype in perspective. Around ancient cities there are tens of thousands of ancient graves, large and small. In a ten year period there are hundreds of thousands of ancient tombs looted or opened by archaeologists in China. To find 3 perserved corpses from the Han period across 4 centuries of the Han dynasty and a population of several tens of millions according to Han census suggests there is not any effective embalming going on despite the huge resources and lavish attention paid to the dead & tombs in ancient China.
The family members of Lady Xin nearby were scraps of bone, yet her son died in the same year as she did.
Why was he not preserved?
Well, neither was she in truth.
The answer, as I have said, is the tomb being sealed completely. Something the people above ground could not tell.
The state of Chu influenced the style of tomb at the Mawangdui cemetery. They were deep chambered shafts based on the Chu tradition.
Chu graves seem to have been constructed in quite distinct ways, and sealed very well. Some rare cases occur where silk textiles & lacquerware come out of tombs that have been vacuumed sealed. A preserved corpse might survive too out of 1 in every, say 100,000 tombs.
The tombs of Chu are quite remarkbale in that I have seen pics of remarkably well preserved objects, swords in intact sheaths with sword boxes containing them, polearms with the wooden lacquered poles intact etc. These same tombs preserved textiles and silks. Amazing time capsules.
Once the objects are removed they need careful restoration. Even a halberd pole like below (attached) took 2 years of work to stabilise (!)
Just like the Lady Xin these objects have been sealed off, but they need to be treated since they are NOT preserved...hence the Lady's organs floating in jars.
Even some bronzes come out of these sealed tombs golden and then turn dark after hours in the modern air. The potential for corrosion or decay is there. To repeat, yet again, the Lady Xin was preserved due to her tomb environment.
Such tombs when opened have trapped the vapours of what decay did occur before the lack of oxegen stopped it. The fumes can knock a person unconsious. About the couple of other preserved corpses, why they are, I cannot say, but the Lady Xin is no mystery. Maybe some other chemical painted another body (or just the same air-seal was created) but we cannot know from newspaper clipping nor should we assume there was some lost secret. If there was a secret...the Han didn't know it either.
They thought sticking a piece of jade in your mouth, nose, ears and back passage would work.
Tomb gaurdians (ceramic creatures that look fearsome) were placed to scare off spirits that caused decay by eating the body. The is how the Han understood what appeared to look like a body being eaten (bacteria digest the internal organs). The Chinese misunderstood body corruption and thought of magical solutions. Hence the rather small number of preserved corpses. Lady Xin? Case closed.
Cinnabar (mercury sulphide) is not the answer.

Below are 3 examples of objects from sealed tombs in Henan that show how organic material can survive. Sword box, scabbard & sword. Lacquered & painted scabbard & sword, ji halberd, zun & lacquered pole.

How do you explain the mummyfication???? A body would certainly begin to rot and decay due to the moisture & bacteria within the sealed coffin and within the instestine of the body.



Objects or people? One has to ask why arnt there more cases of mummifications???? One has to also ask was it the sole substance in the coffin?


I am not 100% sure if this is the case also with mercury sulphide, from what I have read heavy metals like arsenic do have preservational qualities. From what I recall there were a number of cases of victoms of arsenic poisoning that showed their bodies in well preserved states. It should alos be noted arsenic (or arsenic compounds) at one time was used in embalming.
We do know that various Taoist alchemist did do some highly unusual experiements and were able to discover things such as gunpowder and hormones from human urine etc. it could just be an isolated case in my opinion. We are not 100% sure.

On mercury thsi is what I found:
" mercuric chloride, or mercury bichloride, or corrosive sublimate (HgCl2): disinfectant, tanning of leather, spray for potato seedlings (to protect from disease), insecticide, preservation of wood, embalming fluid, textile printing, and engraving

mercuric cyanide (Hg(CN)2): germicidal soaps (soaps that kill germs), photography

mercuric oxide (HgO): red or yellow pigment in paints, disinfectant, fungicide (to kill fungi), perfumes and cosmetics "
http://www.chemistryexplained.com/elements/L-P/Mercury.html
(Once again I am not sure if this is the case with mercury sulphide to be fair)




It may have just been an isolated experiment by Taoists alchemists.
Even the Yellow Emperor did some obscure experiments.
There are also existence of a few preserved corpses of saints in Europe (see the links I provided in my original post).
They certainly wasnt wide spread but never the less they exist.


I would be curious for the sources.



If you buried any body in a sarcophagus with tons of dirt on top it will be sealed pretty much air tight. It does not eradicate the effects of bacteria and mositure in a coffin. I was even told be a gravedigger about how corpses will bloat up due to the bacteria.



Its well known among archelogical circles that hard organic material like wood could be well preserved in oxygen deprive environment but its another thing regarding moist flesh.


If the lack of oxygen was the cause why isnt there more cases of preserved corpses out of hundreds of tombs???
It still does not eradicate bacteria within the body. Not to mention I do not see any major color pigmentation changes on her skin which you would expect from some level of decomposition.



Or the information wasnt wide spread.
Jospeh Needham for example documents tons of technology invented in ancient China that were not wide spread or became lost over time.



Once again these are hard organic materials. They are not moist bacterial infested flesh.

I know with Egyptian mummification process they specifically remove the internal organs (like the brain and the intestine etc. ) to prevent the decomposition of the corpse from the inside out.

One has to also ask what has the scientists & researchers have said in regards to the mummies. Whats the big secret?

(Keep in mind I'm not totally discounting what you have said. What I want to see is more scientific documentation that explains it without a doubt.)