Warning: This story contains graphic images of a mummified body.
As It Happens6:06Nobody could have guessed how this 18th-century Austrian mummy was preserved
Scientists have figured out how the body of an 18th-century Austrian vicar has remained so well-preserved for nearly 300 years — and it’s unlike anything they’ve seen before.
Kept in a church crypt in a remote Austrian village, he’s long been known as the “air-dried chaplain.” But according to a recent CT scan he was, in fact, dried from the inside out.
“We got a look into the inside of the body, and there we found that the abdominal and pelvic cavities were almost completely stuffed with some mysterious material,” Andreas Nerlich, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich pathologist who led the research, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
A partial autopsy revealed the stuffing is a mix of wood chips, twigs, dried plants and fabrics, which would have soaked up all the bodily fluids and moisture that normally cause decay.
But, unlike in other cases of intentional mummification, there were no visible incisions anywhere on the man’s body.
“The only way for this insertion was the anal canal, which they had used for all the stuffing of this material inside the body,” Nerlich said.
The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, describe a previously unheard-of embalming technique.
A newly discovered embalming technique
Scientists found traces of zinc chloride in the rectal stuffing, which Nerlich says would have had a drying effect, while also killing bacteria that emerges in the decaying process.
There was no internal damage to his upper body cavities, suggesting the material was inserted from below. The study concludes the embalmer most likely had to cut through the upper rectum or colon.
Andrew Nelson, chair of the department of anthropology at Western University in London, Ont., called it “extremely interesting.”
“Somebody knew what they were doing,” said Nelson, who was not involved in the research.
Nelson says some ancient Egyptian and Peruvian mummification practices involved “eviscerating” the anus — cutting it open to remove organs and entrails.
But he’s never seen anything quite like this.
“It certainly highlights the sort of thing that every time you do a CT scan of a mummy, you never know what you’re going to find,” he said.
Who was he?
The man in question is believed to be Austrian vicar Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, an aristocratic monk who died from infectious disease in 1746 at the age of 37. His body has long rested at St. Thomas am Blasenstein, a church north of the Danube River in Austria.
A few years after his death, rumours began swirling about his remarkably intact body, Nerlich said. According to CNN, the mysterious preservation drew pilgrims to the village who believed the remains might bestow healing properties.
The new study confirms a lot of local knowledge about the man. Radiocarbon dating shows he died between 1734 and 1780, likely 30 to 50 years, as expected. An analysis of his bone, skin and teeth reveal a diet rich in grain and meat, in keeping with the food supply of a local parish vicar.
His skeleton showed no signs of stress, which would be typical of the relatively comfortable life of a man of the cloth.
How did he die?
In the year 2000, a pharmacologist from the University of Vienna scanned the vicar’s body with a portable X-ray machine and found a small round object nestled in his lower bowel, leading to speculation he’d swallowed a poisonous capsule.
The truth turned out to be much more mundane. The item is, in fact, “a little glass pearl” commonly used to embroider fabrics.
“It must have been coming to the body just by chance during this stuffing,” Nerlich said.
The study concludes the vicar most likely died from complications from tuberculosis, as his body showed several signs of the disease.
Why was he embalmed that way?
Just because the unusual embalming technique has never been documented before doesn’t mean it was rare, says Nerlich. He suspects it has been a method of preserving bodies in the short term when moving them from one place to another.
In this case, the vicar’s remains may have been prepared for transport to his original monastery in Waldhausen im Strudengau, but ended up remaining in the village crypt for unknown reasons.
Nerlich says a number of stars had to align for him and his team to make this discovery.
Had the man been buried rather than left in a dry Alpine crypt, he likely would have decayed. What’s more, his team only performed these tests because the church needed some upkeep, and they were able to borrow the body for study during renovations.
Canadian bioarchaeologist Heather Gill-Frerking says the study is an example of how modern technology is “vital to unravelling ancient mysteries.”
But she says she wishes the researchers had not opened up the body to examine what they found in their scans.
“This particular project revealed some valuable information, but I am not a proponent of the invasive, destructive autopsy approach to the analysis of mummies,” she told CBC in an email.
Nelson says it’s always important, when studying mummies, to centre their humanity.
“It’s kind of titillating to think of, you know, stuffing things up his rectum. But something that’s always important to recognize is that these are people,” he said.
“He was a person. He loved people. People loved him. And we’ve always got to keep that in mind.”
