Human dripped in honey: The Mellified Man, a healthy treat?
This week we explore a bizarre belief that the essence of a dead human embalmed in honey could offer significant health benefits. It's a strange story, taking us from China, to Arabia, and Egypt.
This essay from Honeybee Histories takes a turn to the strange. It might seem unlikely, but there really is such a thing in human history as a mellified man. What is this, you might ask? Essentially mellified (as in ‘mel’ for honey) is a corpse preserved or rather embalmed in honey. If you think of an Egyptian mummy, but using honey instead of their usual preservatives, then you wouldn’t be far off.
There is some evidence that this really did happen in the distant past. Indeed, it is even suggested that Alexander the Great was mellified so that his body could be preserved on the long journey home (after he had died in battle). Much of the evidence though is circumstantial - rumours and claims recorded by scholars and medical men.
What drives a human being to eat the dead of their own species? Kevin J. Wetmore sought to explore this question and found a variety of strange and bizarre practices in history, which tried to normalise cannibalism. Amongst these was a practice of consuming pieces of dead humans embalmed in honey as a medicinal remedy. This was called mellification and it was a form of embalming or preserving human remains.