On the pharmacy tray there is a modest package with an immodest price. “However, is it any wonder,” says the seller. “This is the legendary mumiyo, or Illyrian resin …” Ancient alchemists considered this amazing substance to be the main component of the “elixir of immortality”. There are darker pages in the mumiyo's biography. It became the root cause of the plundering of the Egyptian pyramids. They tried to synthesize it by digesting the corpses of criminals. Its secret has not yet been solved.
… A column of horsemen moved along the roads of the Middle Ages in Europe, accompanying a luxurious carriage. Changing horses at the outposts, the detachment hurried to Paris. But rumors of this procession moved even faster. Armed gangs of robbers tried three times to recapture the precious treasure that the envoy of the Persian shahinshah Fath Ali was carrying as a gift to King Louis XVI. However, although the detachment in colored turbans lost half of the soldiers, the priceless cargo was safely delivered to the Palace of Versailles. And at the very first diplomatic reception, the Shahinshah's messenger handed the French king a rosewood box, and in it a small silver bottle filled with a dark viscous mass.
Today, when there are many good medicines, it seems strange that people risked their lives for such a trifle as mumiyo. But at that time it was a truly priceless gift. And the shahinshah would have been furious if he had found out how Louis disposed of his gift.
The court doctor and personal pharmacist of Louis Savary was upset to tears when he was forbidden to unseal the bottle and ordered to lock it in a distant chest. But the king of France was afraid of poisoning most of all and therefore ordered to hide the bottle away from sin …
The Egyptians called this mysterious substance "Illyrian resin" and used it not only for medicinal purposes, but also for embalming the bodies of the dead. At least, the legends told about it. The Arabs called him "mumiyo". And it was believed that it was no coincidence that the words "mummy" and "mumiyo" were practically consonant. For ancient physicians, they were equal not only in sound, but also in meaning.
The researcher of Egyptian culture, writer Peter Elebracht believed that it was the magic mummy that became the primary reason for the looting of the Egyptian pyramids and other burials.
Rumors of a magical resin, mined in the mountains of Illyria in the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula, gradually took possession of the minds. All more or less rich people sought to have at least a drop of this healing potion in their home medicine cabinet. Trying to satisfy the ever-increasing demand, the ancient adventurers adapted to obtain mumiyos by scraping them off the skulls and bones of the embalmed dead.
According to a report from the physician Abd el-Latif, dating from about 1200, the mumiyo obtained from three human skulls was sold for half a dirham - a considerable price even today, since a dirham is a silver coin weighing 297 grams. The enterprising merchants of Cairo and Alexandria hired crowds of Egyptian peasants to excavate the necropolises.
Promotional video:
Further more. Since there was still not enough "embalmed raw materials", the fraudsters stopped standing on ceremony at all. In the 16th century, fresh corpses of executed criminals and deceased people were already used to make a magic potion. Whole gangs of robbers dug up graves in cemeteries, kidnapping newly buried bodies, dismembering them and boiling them in cauldrons until muscles were separated from bones. The oily liquid was discharged from the boiler through a system of special pipes and poured into flasks, which were then sold to the sick and the sick for big money.
According to documents, in 1420 the city judge of Cairo ordered the flogging of several of these grave robbers until they confess that they were making a popular “medicinal potion” in their “salotopka”. In 1564, the French physician Guy de Fontaine from Navarre testified that in the warehouse of one of the mumiyo merchants in Alexandria, he discovered heaps of slave bodies that were intended to be processed into the notorious potion.
In 1585, an agent of a Turkish trading company, John Sanderson, informed a friend that he had received an order to ship 600 pounds of dried carrion from Cairo to England in the form of an all-healing agent.
The Egyptian authorities tried to end the corpse trade with harsh laws. However, no bans could stop the export of mumiyo: profits were so high that smuggling flights continued across the Mediterranean and further to European countries. And it is quite possible to understand King Louis XVI, who refused to use the Shahinshah's gift. Indeed, in a beautiful silver vessel there could well have been "boiled-out from dead slaves and criminals" …
Our modern medical luminaries keep deathly silence about the mummy. It turned out that such a medicine, although it is sold on many trays, does not seem to exist in nature.
The State Pharmacopoeia Committee at the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation looked for a long time in the computer for a list of approved drugs and in the end (surprised themselves) they said that the mummy was not listed there.
The All-Union Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants has a Scientific Research Center for Biological Structures, whose specialists are responsible for the safety of Lenin's body. Maybe there, studying the methods of mummification of the ancient Egyptians, they also tested the properties of the "Illyrian resin". But the deputy director of the center, Y. Denisov-Nikolsky, said that they had not examined the mummy. And besides, he assured that the Egyptians never used this substance in the mummification of their dead, that all this is not based on anything …
So what happens? Mumiyo is nothing more than a bluff? Alas, there is no definite answer. Modern medicine acted in the manner of King Louis XVI, trying to forget about the mysterious mummy, hiding it in a distant box. The fact is that there were still studies, but scientists did not come to a common opinion: how and from what the strange substance is obtained and whether it has any real healing properties. At one time, there was even a general dispute: someone spoke about the inorganic origin of the mumiyo, others assured that it was dry feces of mice who had eaten medicinal herbs … But the disputes subsided, never giving birth to the truth. And ordinary people, as before, continue to use the mumiyo, confident in its miraculous power.
However, in Russia there is still a group of researchers working closely with the drug. One of these specialists, Professor N. Makarov, claims that a magic potion is nothing more than a set of trace elements that make up the basis of any living substance. This set can be found in nature in the form of decomposition products of ancient living organisms, can be isolated from any biological object. So the substance obtained after long-term boiling of dead bodies may well be curative (there is an opinion that the true mumiyo is made from the fat of the "Bigfoot". - Ed. Note).
Of course, this is still only a hypothesis. But at one of the scientific and practical seminars, specialists from N. Makarov's research laboratory showed the mummy artificially obtained by them (scientists call this substance MOS - mineral organic substrate). Research protocols testified: MOS is able to increase people's working capacity, shorten the rehabilitation period after radiation injury, increase male potency …
It turns out that King Louis didn’t want to give up a precious gift anyway? Who knows … Experts from the French Academy of Sciences, who recently examined the black mass that filled that silver bottle, came to the conclusion that there was ordinary asphalt resin.
Here, however, the substitution version cannot be ruled out. Who can guarantee that the venerable physician Savary, secretly from the king, did not change the contents of the bottle? Indeed, according to the chronicles of that time, the court doctor made a considerable fortune by trading in "rejuvenating cream" of his own manufacture, for which wealthy noblewomen were ready to pay any money. And the wife of Savary himself (again, according to rumors), although she was not listed as a beauty, was famous for the fact that until the age of sixty she did not have a single wrinkle on her face …
From the book: “XX century. Chronicle of the inexplicable. Opening after opening”. Nikolai Nepomniachtchi
