Of the multitude of humans who were embalmed and mummified, only a minute fraction of them survive in museums. In the late nineteenth century, millions of human mummies were used as fuel for locomotives in Egypt, where wood and coal was scarce and mummies plentiful. When Mark Twain saw this on his trip through Egypt, he claims he heard an engineer call out, “Damn these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent! Pass out a King!”
The Egyptians also used them as fertilizer and even to thatch the roofs of their houses. The wood from the coffins was used by poor Egyptians as firewood to cook on. Some Italian homes were even paneled with such coffin wood. Renaissance painters sometimes mixed mummy powder into their paints, believing it would help keep their colors bright. And then during the 1860s, American and Canadian companies bought shiploads of mummies and used their linen wrappings to make wrapping paper. Production was halted after a cholera epidemic was traced to this paper.
Source:
Stephens, John Richard. “Ingorance & Intelligence.” Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 115-16. Print.
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