Medieval apothecaries sold mummy wine as medicine, and new tests are tracing what patients actually drank.

The Story

Mummy wine was a variable medicine: powdered remains or extracts entered liquids, but the recipe changed with place, period, and supply.

The safest reconstruction treats mummy wine as one form of a wider medicinal trade. Apothecaries reduced mummy material to powder or extract and administered it in liquids, while the substance itself could contain corpse tissue, embalming aromatics, or substitutes. The evidence does not support a single universal ingredient list.

• IngredientsCadaver-derived material and embalming-associated substances such as myrrh and aloe appear in historical descriptions; pitch-asphalt belonged to another mūmiyāʾ tradition.
• ProductionThe basic methods were pulverizing dried material or preparing a tinctured extract, followed by administration in a liquid such as wine.
• TradeDemand encouraged substitutes and fabricated mummies, so a product sold as mumia was not necessarily ancient Egyptian human remains.

• A medieval Latin description defines mumia as material from ancient corpses mixed with embalming spices, specifically naming myrrh and aloe.simonofgenoa
• A scholarly overview describes mumia as pulverized or tinctured extracts of human corpses and mummies.scholarsbank
• Historical pharmacy records describe artificially dried and prepared human material, as well as bodies filled with bitumen and dried in the sun.pharmaceutical-journal