Pat Sloan asked yesterday, regarding my earlier post on the preserved
hearts of the Bourbon family:
> How did they preserve the hearts? An Egyptian mummy looks very much like a
> prune, and I have slides from the Brit Museum in which one is partially
> unwrapped. If you live near the kind of Chinese market that sells dried
> oysters, dried sea cucumbers, dried abalone, etc, . it's fairly clear that
> the remains of any animal form, when dried, always gets that same prune-like
> look. The dark brown color is pervasive enough in mummies where it's really
> impossible to tell the original skin color of the mummifoed person (much to
> the disappointment of my students).
I don't know any details except that they were embalmed in some way and
then placed in sealed urns. The etiquette/ritual for opening the bodies
of deceased Bourbons was elaborate and public (at least in the presence of
the members of the deceased's household--chamberlains, ladies in waiting,
assorted knaves, jokers, flunkies and so forth). Most of the organs were
removed and also embalmed but the hearts alone were deposited at Val-de-Grace.
(Other organs went to St-Denis along w/the body.) Possibly substances
used in the embalming accounted for the iridescence?
John Parsons
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