Mummy Preservative - Ingredient used to preserve Ancient Egyptian Mummies

An ingredient used in preserving mummies has been found by a team of scientists. Had they read Pliny the Elder, they might have found it sooner.

The ingredient is an extract of the cedar tree with antibacterial properties. They were found in "chunks of embalming tar, found with the 2,500-year-old mummy of Saankh-kare," according to MSN's article (www.msnbc.com/news/983621.asp) Secrets of mummy-making revealed.

The preservative is called Guaiacol.

Pliny had written about this ingredient, albeit centuries later, but it would have saved millennia if scientists had read him: "The team extracted the cedar oil using a method mentioned in a work by Pliny the Elder, a Roman encyclopedist who wrote of an embalming ointment called 'cedrium'."