Mummifying Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret; Screening and Q+A by the Petrie Museum

I’ll be honest; I was sceptical when I arrived at the screening of Mummifying Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret on 31 January.

The programme detailed the mummification of a modern day man, Alan Billis, using Ancient Egyptian methods. I wasn’t sceptical that they could do it, although I have no real knowledge of the Egyptian embalming process, I thought it was probably quite straightforward – all you need is a lot of bandages right?

No, what I couldn’t get my head round was the purpose of the programme, what could we possibly learn from this experiment that could relate to everyday life today? With so few people leaving their body to medical science, I couldn’t help but see it as a waste of a great gift.

However, several minutes into the programme my first problem was resolved. Alan Billis left his body specifically for this project; it was his wish to leave a legacy that his grandchildren could relate to and could be proud of. A few minutes more and I could barely remember why I’d been so sceptical in the first place – I was fascinated.

Dr Stephen Buckley, the mastermind behind this endeavour, is engaging to say the least and when he showed the cameras into the lab that he constructed in his kitchen and the garden shed where he practised his mummification techniques on pigs’ trotters, I couldn’t help but laugh.

The details of the mummification process were worked out by Dr Buckley using his pigs’ legs as a precedent, and the footage of Alan’s mummification was woven together with scenes of natural human decay from a ‘body farm’ in America.

This served to highlight the incredible skill the Egyptians had developed in preserving their dead. They were in a race against time to stop the body’s natural stock of bacteria who are clambering over themselves to destroy the soft tissues, yet they had to preserve the body with enough care so that the spirit would recognise its earthly body and choose to remain there, rather than crossing to the next world.

Six weeks after the completion of the process, Alan was unwrapped to check the stability of his tissues and to compare the condition of his body to the mummies of the 18^th dynasty (the process Dr Buckley was attempting to replicate).

It felt like the whole room was holding its breath as the bandages were pulled back to reveal Alan’s perfectly preserved face. It was a real triumph for all the team involved and I felt a real sense of elation. Quite different from my earlier discomfort.

After the screening of the film, we were treated to a Q+A session in which the show’s executive producer, Gillian Mosely, revealed that the entire documentary took more than eight years to produce. She discussed the problems that they faced, in terms of the legal issues involved and also the difficulty in finding a studio that would support the project. I have to say that despite my earlier misgivings, I’m glad that they went to all this time and effort because the end result was a truly captivating (and surprisingly emotional) piece of television for me and a real breakthrough for Egyptian historians.

Not to mention a legacy to be proud of for “Tuten-Alan” as he hoped to become known.