ST. THOMAS AM BLASENSTEIN, AUSTRIA—Researchers have finally solved the mystery of a centuries-old mummified individual whose exceptionally well-preserved state has baffled experts for decades. According to a statement released by Frontiers, the mummified remains of an individual buried in the church crypt of St. Thomas an Blasenstein belong to local parish vicar Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, who died in 1746. Known as the “air-dried chaplain,” recent CT scanning revealed the little-known mummification technique that has kept the holy man’s body largely free from postmortem decay. The images indicated that the man’s abdominal and pelvic cavity had been packed with wood chips from fir and spruce, fragments of branches, as well as different fabrics, including linen, hemp, and flax. The researchers believe this mixture of materials kept the mummy in such good condition as it absorbed much of the fluid inside the abdominal cavity. Additionally, toxicological analysis showed traces of zinc chloride, which has a strong drying effect. Experts were previously unaware the vicar’s corpse had been treated with these materials, because the body showed no signs that it had been opened. Instead, the secret was that the embalmers inserted them through the rectum, which left very little evidence. “This type of preservation may have been much more widespread but unrecognized in cases where ongoing postmortal decay processes may have damaged the body wall so that the manipulations would not have been realized as they were,” said Andreas Nerlich, a pathologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Frontiers in Medicine. To read about the use of CT scanning to virtually unwrap the mummified body of an Egyptian royal, go to "Inside a Pharaoh's Coffin," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2022.
