thedailywhat:

Everybody Needs A Hobby of the Day: 61-year-old taxi driver Alan Billis of Torquay, Devon, passed away earlier this year of lung cancer. His dying wish was rather uncommon. 

In fact, it was Tutankhamun: Billis wanted his body to be donated to an experiment involving mummification.

That’s right: Mr. Billis has become the first person in three millennia to be mummified. “I won’t be Tutankhamun, I’ll be Tutanalan,” Billis said prior to his death. “[T]he grandkids will be able to tell their friends their grandad’s a mummy.”

The experiment was conducted by a team of scientists lead by forensic pathologist Professor Peter Vanezis. It was carried out at Sheffield’s Medico Legal Centre using many of the same techniques employed by ancient Egyptians in the mummification of pharaohs.

Billis’s organs were removed from his body, and his corpse was sterilized and packed with bags of linen. It was then coated with oil and beeswax and left to soak in a salt bath for a month before being dried out in a humidor set to mimic the conditions of Egypt. Finally, it was wrapped in traditional linen bandages and left to dry.

“It’s just the sort of thing you’d expect him to do,” said Billis’s wife Jan. “He said, ‘When I’m dead, I’m dead, it doesn’t make any difference what they do to me. Besides, what they find out might do someone else some good’.”

Mummifying Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret, a special Channel 4 documentary on the process, is set to air this coming Monday at 9PM. Check out details and previews, including an interview with Alan and Jan Billis, on the Channel 4 website.

[mirror / channel4.]

Some days I miss UK TV