The Mummification of El Chicken

To wrap up our study of Ancient Egypt, we're mummifying a chicken in the ancient ways of the Egyptian priests. We started on Feb. 11 with your standard, garden variety grocery store chicken. It weighed 175g. Fleshy, healthy-looking, plump, all those good things. Even Sequoia thinks it's yummy.


We washed, dried well, and put in a bag, completely covered with sodium bicarbonate (your grocery-store version of Arm and Hammer laundry detergent). It's essentially the same thing as what the Egyptians used, natron. The sodium bicarbonate draws all the moisture from the chicken over the course of several weeks. It has to be changed every 10 days or so, and the chicken weighed.


After the first 10 days we just changed the bag yesterday and found a chicken well on its way to being mummified. Much smaller, much dryer, a dark brown color, and only weighing 78 grams, about 1/2 its starting weight. Way smellier too; after a quick look, the kids didn't stick around for the bag-changing.

We have 1-2 more weeks to go. After it's completely dried out, we'll cover with oil and spices, wrap in gauze (linen) and bury. Meanwhile, we're moving on to Ancient India, China, and Greece.