Alan Billis, a 61-year-old taxi driver who suffered from lung cancer, lived a pretty ordinary life. He drove around, watched documentaries and did what everybody else did. His afterlife though, is going to be extraordinary. After he passed, Billis became the first person in 3000 years to get mummified.
Just like the pharaohs we learned about in elementary school and those movies with Brendan Fraser, Billis is now a mummy. Before he passed in January, Billis saw an advertisement asking for volunteers to become mummified and he figured, why not? He had once said, “people have been leaving their bodies to science for years, and if people don’t volunteer for anything nothing gets found out.”
So Alan Billis got the official King Tut treatment. Seriously, it’s the same mummifying techniques used on King Tut back in 1323BC. Scientists removed all of Billis’ internal organs — except his brain and heart — and kept them preserved in jars. The rest of his body was immersed in salt for over a month (to draw out the body’s water), covered with a mixture of oils and of course, wrapped in linen like any respectable mummy would. His skin has a leathery appearance to it now, but his wife says the mummy still looks like Billis. His body should survive for thousands and thousands of years now.
I wonder if Billis the Modern Mummy will confuse the hell out of future archaeologists and stuff. Why was this ordinary man mummified! Was he a king!? Is he even Egyptian? The whole mummification feature was shown on Channel 4 in the UK. [Daily Mail]