[GnarfGnarf]

It’s heartbreaking to think of what treasures were lost when they were using mummies as locomotive fuel in the 19th century.

[CamelCaseCondo]

Elliott, Chris (2017). "Bandages, Bitumen, Bodies and Business – Egyptian mummies as raw materials". Aegyptiaca (1): 40–46.

https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/aegyp/articl...

Also:

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

[sashank_1509]

wtf I’m going to wager that this is a local myth. Just using corpses as fuel feels a bit antithetical to human traditions

[Starlevel004]

They were actually eaten (in the early modern era) or ground up for paint.

[Tanoc]

Most commonly used for paint or to colour bricks, yes. It's disgusting, but the British and Italians didn't really care at that point because anthropology and archaeology were not respected professions in the 1820s. They were just hobbies of wealthy gentlemen who liked to travel.

Most disturbing is that apparently people kept using them for paint up until the last supplier ran out of mummies sometime around 1960. Yes. 1960.

[sashank_1509]

Was there no fear of being haunted by spirits?