The Making of a Modern Mummy

When Mr M, an elderly Baltimore man, died of heart failure in 1994 he donated his body to science. Like Rameses the Great, the Egyptian Pharaoh who died in 1225 BC, his passing was treated with all due reverence. Both were annointed with oils and spices, and carefully wrapped in linen shrouds upon which were written farewell messages in hieroglyphics.

But where Rameses, responsible for building the great temple of Abu Simbel, had Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, watching as he was prepared, annointed and wrapped, Mr M’s preservation was supervised by two American scholars: Egyptologist Bob Brier, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Long Island University, and Ronald Wade, director of Anatomical Services at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.