The Untold Truth Of Mummies

May 2024 · 2 minute read

You might think the mummification process begins only after a person's last heartbeat. But according to Atlas Obscura, a small number of Shingon monks in Japan began to mummify themselves while they were still breathing. The goal of the practice was to enter a state of deep, eternal meditation, and over the course of about 800 years, over a dozen monks actually succeeded at making mummies of themselves. 

It began with a pretty nasty diet that forbade the ingestion of anything but what could be found in the wooded mountains where they lived in solitude, leaving them to eat nuts, roots from trees, bark, and pine needles. Thought to cleanse the spirit, this strict diet also eliminated body fat, muscle tissue, and moisture — ultimately beginning mummifying the body while they were still alive.

This was done for 1,000 days, alternating between foraging for food and meditating until the cycle was considered to be complete. Most of these Japanese monks went through the cycle several times before feeling that they were truly ready for the final step...likely because the final step was death. They'd stop eating until they felt that it was finally time to die. At that point they'd call on their friends to bury them into a relatively small pit with just a small tube leading to the surface for air so they wouldn't suffocate, but instead would die from starvation.

The process was far from over, however. A thousand years after their burial, the tombs of these monks were opened to see if mummification was successful. Only the bodies that showed no sign of decay were considered successful and were enshrined. All the others were discarded and basically considered a giant waste of time.

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