What is a mummy? For most people, the word immediately brings to mind visions of Egypt and, in particular, pictures of a body wrapped in swaddling bands of cloth. This was the original idea of the term, and indeed from the earliest days of antiquity, the preserved bodies of ancient Egypt have gripped the imagination of all who knew about them, whether rich or poor, educated or not. This was so much the case that when the Romans took over Egypt and found the art of preservation to be badly degenerated, they tried to revive the old ways. But it was too late. The ability to read hieroglyphics and ancient writings had been lost when the Greeks under under the Ptolemies conquered the country and introduced their much superior Greek script. However, some form of body preservation was continued up to the eighth century AD. At that time, the invading Arabs swept all before them in Egypt. To them, the practice of embalming the dead was abhorrent, and they put a stop to it.

Today, the term mummy has been extended to cover all well-preserved dead bodies. The majority of these are found in dry places such as the sands of deserts or dry caves, where desiccation has taken place rapidly, doing naturally what Egyptians did by artifice. The basic procedure in either process is the same: water is extracted rapidly from the tissues.