[Ekaros]

I remember hearing that there were so many mummies around from Egypt that they were used as fuel in some cases... Humans never have valued far enough removed dead...

And surely yes, if I were local peasant near battlefield I would go and pick through it after everyone is gone. Or at latest when most of the stink is gone... Metals at least had value.

[defrost]

For a while in Europe it was popular to eat mummies . . .

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-...

[Someone]

> there were so many mummies around from Egypt that they were used as fuel in some cases

Likely, but it seems they aren’t 100% sure of that at the Encyclopædia Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/list/7-surprising-uses-for-mummie...:

“It was claimed by author Mark Twain that mummies had been used as fuel for locomotives. In his 1869 travel book called The Innocents Abroad, Twain describes the first railroad in Egypt. Because of the lack of trees and the price of coal, Twain claims that the Egyptians used mummies instead. He wrote, “[The fuel used] for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose.””

Also, FTA: “we know the British imported mummies and bones from Egypt on an industrial scale”

[angiosperm]

We know, anyway, that they used untold millions of cat mummies for locomotive fuel. In other news, Egyptians mummified millions of cats.

[DonHopkins]

Now we make cat drones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0hyg4kfaw

[u32480932048]

Cambyses II would be proud.

https://short-history.com/cats-caused-the-ancient-egyptians-...

[082349872349872]

So maybe the human mummies were just there to provide for the cat mummies needs, in the afterlife?

[worthless-trash]

To use on the english trains ?

[seabass-labrax]

If you're seriously asking, I highly doubt so. Great Britain has massive deposits of relatively clean, accessible coal. They are mostly in Wales but also in England and Scotland. Therefore there would be little reason to import any fuel from Egypt; over that distance, the steam ship would probably consume as many mummies as it was carrying.

[worthless-trash]

I highly doubt so too, which is why I'm wondering why they would import it en-masse. What value would mass remains have ?

[seabass-labrax]

Archaeology was a booming field in Britain throughout the 19th century, being a fashionable pursuit for predominantly upper-class individuals. Many private collections were started, and most of the great museums were founded during this time. Egyptology in particular struck a chord with European society at the time.

Just have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_with_Egyptian_... to get an rough idea of the extent of Egypt-mania in Britain; the 'UK' section dwarfs the others! So although that quote is rather vague, I strongly suspect that it is simply referring to the large quantity of Egyptian artefacts that were being excavated and moved to museums in Britain, especially after Epypt was annexed by and amalgamated into the British Empire in 1882.

[stevekemp]

Mummies were also used to make paint:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

[ggm]

I was told that by 1946 almost every French farmer from Normandy to the Ardennes had at least one Jerry Can.