Hacker News Reader

Comment by rolph | Hacker News Reader

"Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fényes hopes could contain more treasures."

i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.

View on HN

I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body wouldn’t leave that much remains after degrading. I remember learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever together.

https://historyinstone.blogspot.com/2019/07/above-ground-bur...

> In the early days of New Orleans, the pieces of the casket were removed and burned, while the remains were pushed to the back of the tomb, falling into an underground chamber called a caveau (This is where the phrase, "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole comes from... the pole being the device used to push remains to the back of the tomb).

TIL

I’ve always heard the phase a little different, “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot barge pole.” And when I search that the story matches yours.

sarcophagus looks to be 2 feet by 7 feet based on scale of objects in the image.

is 1.75 cubic feet of solid material reasonable?

the image displays distinct relief cracks of a drying wet slurry, the dark staining inside the coffin suggests high fluid mark was maybe 4inches, it may have knocked an urn over, before recedeing, and evaporating.

while not up on the finer points of such burial practice, it doesnt seem unreasonable that a consideral amount of flowers and other plant materials may be involved, there should be considerable pollen present, potassium and sodium salts of the decedent, adipocere, and perhaps diatoms dependent on the nature of the soil, and source of water percolating into the sarcophagus.

i believe considering it to be just mud, would be to overlook, a volume of pertinant discovery.

"dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue...and condensation". Yeah - mud.

Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say lakebottom or swamp mud.

'Coffin liquor' may be the most disgusting pair of words I've ever read, and I've been on the internet a while. Wow.

I was getting the exact same thing. I will be using the term in conversation now though.

Sounds like a cocktail to me. Somewhat like a black russian but browner in colour.

Cool band name, too.

Haha I told my good friend (we played together in a black metal band 100 years ago) that we might want to try again with this name.

There's a grindcore album by that name. Which I'll now have to check out ;)

https://napalmted.bandcamp.com/album/coffin-liquor

Vampires playing black metal during the roaring 20s must have been wild

> Cool band name, too.

Coffin Liquor. It's to die for.

Brown is right. "Mummy brown" is a pigment made from ground up mummy.

Similar to “dumpster piss”. hehe.

I'm imagining vampires obsessing over terroir...

Try these three words: Victorians eating mummies

Love this bit of lore. It goes super well with The Thought Emporiums video about recreating an Egyptian mummy just to eat it: https://youtu.be/fbhV0TP3jco

Sounds like dirt to me.

I was reading the article looking for mentions of some analysis that this might allow. Perhaps all that archaeology does with this material is to sift it for objects.

Step 1: Find it.

Step 2: Archive it. (Dig and catalogue)

Step 3: Analyze it.

We often learn new things from fossils that have been shelved for decades, but not yet researched, so I assume analysis is still in the pipeline.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com