Europeans Once Ate Egyptian Mummies as Medicine. Now, Scientists Tested the Chemistry

An ancient remedy showed a modest effect against flu in cells. The mystery is why.

For centuries, some European doctors prescribed a medicine with a gruesome ingredient: the ground-up remains of ancient Egyptians.

Apothecaries sold the powder in jars. Physicians recommended it for wounds, broken bones, and other ailments. Demand grew so intense that merchants reportedly began passing off recently dried corpses as genuine mummies. The label Mumia vera aegyptiaca promised buyers the real thing.

The remedy has long stood as an especially macabre example of medicine gone wrong. But scientists in Germany have now found a surprising twist: an extract from a historical mummy-derived preparation modestly protected laboratory-grown cells from damage caused by influenza viruses.

That doesn’t mean swallowing mummy powder could cure the flu. Far from it. But the discovery suggests that these gruesome remedies were chemically more complicated than anyone might have expected.

Mummy Medicine

The story begins with a centuries-old confusion over what, exactly, constituted a medicine called mumia. Medieval physicians valued medicinal bitumen, a naturally occurring tar-like substance believed to have healing properties. Over time, the term became closely associated with Egyptian mummies, whose darkened, resin-coated bodies were thought to contain similar substances.

By the Renaissance, grinding up Egyptian mummies and selling their remains as medicine had become an established practice in European apothecaries. Physicians prescribed the powder for everything from wounds to internal ailments. But not everyone was convinced. In the 16th century, French surgeon Ambroise Paré warned against prescribing mummy powder.

Nevertheless, a 2025 historical analysis revisited these accounts and concluded that mummy medicines may have been worse than ineffective. Some preparations could actually have harmed the patients taking them.

But what was actually inside the powders Europeans were swallowing?

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For the new study, researchers at the University of Marburg examined 41 historical texts and chemically analyzed 24 objects from museums and university collections. They included pharmacy preparations, embalming residues, bandages, and mummified body parts.

The samples varied widely in composition, although many contained chemical signatures of aged conifer resins. But the researchers also uncovered something unexpected: compounds associated with aloe plants, including one called aloeresin A, whose identity they confirmed using a reference sample.

Aloe might seem like an unlikely ingredient in a preparation made from human remains. Yet the finding hints at a connection stretching back thousands of years.

A Secret Ingredient and a Flu Experiment

An approximately 2,700-year-old mummified skull and an 18th-century pharmacy preparation contained aloe-associated compounds. This marked the first molecular evidence linking aloe to ancient Egyptian embalming materials, according to the researchers.

Aloe had appeared in historical discussions of mummy medicine before, but there was a catch. Ancient references to “aloe” did not necessarily mean the succulent plants we recognize today. The word could also describe agarwood, a fragrant material obtained from certain trees. The newly identified compounds, however, point specifically toward plants in the Aloe genus; what we’d call aloe today.

“The new findings suggest that this association may have deeper historical roots,” said Tanja Pommerening, a professor at Marburg University who leads its Institute for the History of Pharmacy and Medicine, in a university statement.

The discovery fits into a broader effort to reconstruct embalming recipes. In 2023, another team analyzed residues in 31 vessels from an Egyptian embalming workshop and uncovered elaborate mixtures of oils, fats, and imported resins.

But the aloe-associated compounds appeared in two particularly revealing objects among the 24 analyzed. That’s not enough to conclude that aloe was routinely used in Egyptian embalming. Its possible role in the medicinal properties of mummy preparations remains an open question.

The researchers then explored a different question. Could one of these historical medicines actually do anything to living cells?

An Ancient Remedy Meets a Modern Virus

They tested an extract from a Mumia vera preparation preserved in Marburg’s Wigand historical drug collection. This was a separate sample from the two objects that provided the clearest evidence of aloe.

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In laboratory experiments, the extract modestly protected MDCK cells—a type of dog kidney cell commonly used in influenza research—from damage caused by influenza viruses.

It’s an intriguing result, especially because historical physicians sometimes prescribed mummy preparations for symptoms such as coughs, sore throats, and headaches. But this doesn’t mean that the remedy worked. Not in the slightest.

Whatever caused the modest effect remains unknown. It could involve compounds present in small quantities or interactions among several ingredients. And protecting cells from damage is not the same as demonstrating that a substance stops a virus from reproducing. The experiment did not establish that the extract works in humans or can safely treat an infection.

Medieval doctors may have been wrong about the healing powers of the dead. But buried within their bizarre remedies were plant resins and other compounds whose chemistry is only now coming into focus.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.