Our Y3 boys became experts in mummification this week. Using tomatoes instead of a body (hard to get hold of at short notice!), they turned their hand to this ancient Egyptian method of embalming as part of their topic studies.
To begin, they made incisions in the body of the tomato before scooping out the insides – a pretty messy job! The boys learned along the way that the Ancient Egyptians would store the gory inside bits inside canopic jars, which were buried alongside the body. Like real scientists, the boys carefully recorded the weight of their tomatoes at this point so that they could monitor their success at the end.
The next step in the process was to remove excess water to prevent the fruit from rotting – tomatoes like humans are full of water! The boys then carefully added natron (a blend of table salt and bicarbonate of soda) to the tomatoes to dry them out and patiently waited for it to work. Once complete, the boys checked the effectiveness of the process by weighing their tomatoes, before stuffing them with straw and placing them in creatively designed sarcophaguses so that they would look beautiful for the afterlife, like true Ancient Egyptians.
