'Mummy medicine' study finds traces of aloe in Egyptian embalming

As of 8:54 p.m. ET, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026

For centuries, European pharmacies sold a remedy called Mumia vera aegyptiaca, a medicine derived from Egyptian mummies. A new chemical study of surviving samples has found clues to what went into them and into ancient Egyptian embalming, including the first molecular traces of aloe in embalming materials, according to researchers at Germany's Marburg University.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed 24 objects from university and pharmacy museum collections. They included historical Mumia vera products, mummified body parts, embalming residues, bandages and two mummified skulls, the authors wrote.

What the chemistry showed

Materials sold under the Mumia vera label varied widely in makeup, but many shared chemical signatures consistent with aged conifer resins, according to the paper's abstract. Bitumen, a petroleum product, did not show up in the mummy medicine samples tested, NPR reported.

Compounds associated with aloe turned up in two of the 24 objects: a mummified skull radiocarbon-dated to the 8th century B.C. and an 18th-century Mumia vera preparation from a pharmacy in Offenbach am Main, the university said. Until now, aloe had not been identified as an embalming ingredient through molecular analysis, said Tanja Pommerening, who heads Marburg's Institute for the History of Pharmacy and Medicine.

Because aloe appeared in only two objects, the university said, it cannot be concluded that aloe was generally used in mummification. The researchers also said the finding raises the possibility that a previously unresolved Egyptian term from the second millennium B.C. referred to aloe, though the university said a definitive identification has not been made.

A lab test, not a cure

One historical Mumia vera extract modestly protected cells from damage caused by influenza virus in lab tests, while the main compound isolated from it did not, the study found. The university stressed that the results do not show the remedy worked against influenza in people.

Chemical fingerprints also linked a powder sample to a specific mummified head in the German Pharmacy Museum in Heidelberg, though no such connection is recorded in the collection's files, the researchers said.

"Three thousand years afterwards, they're still there," Raphael Reher, a Marburg chemist and pharmacist on the team, told NPR. Anne Austin, an Egyptologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who was not involved in the study, said the team took a strong approach, NPR reported.