Making a mummy

We started studying Egypt this week in our homeschool history lesson, and what do you think of when you think of Egypt, but mummies.  So, taking a page from the Story of the World Ancient History lessons, we’re making a mummy.

Warning, not for the easily grossed out, or germ-o-phobes.

Hi, Future Ticia 2025 here, and I’m combining a couple of different posts, you see we repeated this in 2014, I was wrong it was 2013, and I wrote about it again, and I realized I do not need two different posts for the same activity., so I am turning these into one post, especially because this is a multi-post series in both cases.

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Supplies for making a chicken mummy:

chicken (we used a cornish game hen, to ensure it was small enough), 3 cans of salt, 1 can of baking powder, 1 box of baking soda, gallon size ziploc bag, if your chicken seems larger you might want to get a 2-gallon size bag

Side note, make sure to buy the freezer-style bags because those are slightly thicker and therefore will better stand up to the pounding they’ll take as you mummify the chicken.

Steps for making a chicken mummy:

1.  Wash your chicken, inside and out.  Make sure to have a lot of soap on hand for washing your hands to get rid of germs.

Future Ticia 2013 videotaped the kids doing this:

I’ve been enjoying creating videos of the kids as they tell me steps because it lets me have an audio and video record of their abilities.

This showed mastery of two things:

1. types of joints the chicken has as they moved the chickens wings and legs around
2. why were we washing the chicken as part of mummifying a chicken

Also, the kids love to ham it up for the camera.  It kind of cracks me up.

2.  Dry the chicken.  The dryer it is the more quickly it will mummify (or that was my interpretation of what the instructions was saying).

Comment from 2013 Ticia: At this point, the kids still thought this was fun.  They got a big kick out of drying off the chicken to get it ready for the next step in mummifying a chicken.

3.  Add your salt, half of your baking powder, and half of your baking soda.  Don’t you love the exact details it’s giving?

In 2013 I gave more details: I almost forgot to include this step in how to mummify a chicken.  Get a large mixing bowl and mix roughly equal parts of baking soda and salt.  You can mummify with just salt, but baking soda aids in the mummification.

4.  Put your dry chicken in the bag, put salt in the middle (to ensure bacteria doesn’t grow there, and to help dry out the inside).  Then begin to put salt all around the chicken.

This was the step the kids started to get squeamish on, as you can tell from Princess’ comments.

This is also one of the most important steps to get right.  You need to pack the inside of the chicken pretty solidly with salt, and you need to make sure the chicken is completely covered in the salt mixture as you start to mummify the chicken.

4b. I have no videos or pictures of this because life went crazy as it was happening.

Every 2-3 days you need to completely change out the baking soda salt mixture. This is why I linked to multiple-pound boxes and bags of salt and baking soda. You go through a lot of the desiccation mixture.

If the mixture looks “clumpy” change it earlier. That means that the batch of the desiccant has absorbed all it can.

Scientifically, what’s happening?  Well, let me tell you.  The salt is slowly removing the moisture from the chicken (this whole process is going to take about a month).  Here’s a site talking about mummifying a hot dog.  Sorry, I’d look for a better explanation, but the kids are getting restless, and I’d like to get a few other posts written.

I’ll have periodic updates on our chicken (who 2 days later is still not stinky, so I must have done something right).

Update on the chicken mummy, and the importance of following procedures

How to Mummify a chicken

The science behind mummification

Salt is a natural drying agent, a desiccant.  Baking soda is also a desiccant.  The bacteria that causes things to decompose needs the liquids that are naturally in the body to cause decomposition.  The salt/baking soda mixture will draw out the moisture and prevent decay.

More on Mummification

• How Stuff Works: how mummies work
• How to mummify an apple
• How to mummify action man
• Hands on Mummies

To get more ideas on Ancient history check out my Creation to Christ Pinterest board.

• “Manchester Museum Egyptian Mummies – 2008” by johnthurm is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
• “Replica of King Tutankhamun’s Mummy Case at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum” by mharrsch is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
• Originally published August 15, 2010