In the twenty years since Aidan and I first started working on Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures, the pace of discovery and change has been remarkable. We started from the 1971-75 series of autopsies carried out by our little group on Egyptian mummies, then decided to be adventurous by adding Peruvian. As we continued working, we were surprised to realise how ubiquitous the practice was, and so we continued to add new reports as we went along. Although we were not aware of it at the time, most of the types of mummification described in the first edition had actually appeared in Pettigrew's pioneering 1834 book – as we were humbled to discover some time later.

What a huge change occurred during the next few years! When Cambridge University Press decided in 1995 that it was time for an update, Theodore Reyman (my new co-editor) and I found ourselves suffering from an embarras de richesses. Some of the chapters needed very little revision. As far as ancient Egypt is concerned, the facts about mummification practices have been well documented for many years, and so chapter 1 stays virtually untouched. There have been some interesting discoveries about diseases there in ancient times, but A. T. Sandison's classic account (chapter 2) needed no serious change, just updating with additional material. Chapter 3 on dentistry and dental practices reflects the author's ongoing research during the past twenty years, told from today's vantage point, and the four elaborate case reports describing the autopsies of Egyptian mummies carried out by the founders of the Paleopathology Association and their colleagues (chapters 4, 5, and 6) have been condensed to some extent.