14 DAY TRIAL // Those who have $67,000 (€48,883) to spare and are utterly terrified at the thought of either spending eternity trapped inside a box in the ground or being cremated after their good old ticker retires can now opt for a pharaoh-like burial.
More precisely, they can have themselves mummified and thus make sure that they get to keep their good looks for centuries after their passing.
Unless a meteor chances to land with a smack on their grave shortly after burial and wipe it off the face of the earth, in which case the $67,000 investment might prove a bad one. Daily Mail tells us that, in order to have themselves mummified after death, people must contact Salt Lake City-based company Summum.
This company in the state of Utah, in the United States, is said to be the only one in the world that currently offers mummification services.
It was funded back in 1975 by a man named Claude Nowell, and offers mummification services not just for people, but also for all sorts of animals.
The cost of preserving one's pet cat starts at about $6,000 (€4,377), whereas dog owners typically have to pay at least $25,000 (€18,240).
Since about decades ago, when the company first started preserving human bodies, until present day, Summum has been contacted by 1,500 customers who all said that they wished to be mummified.
Unlike ancient Egyptians, who dehydrated people in order to turn them into mummies, the folks at Summum hydrate the bodies that they work on.
“The olden day mummies look very dry and that’s because it was believed the best way to preserve them for the afterlife was to completely dehydrate them,” explains counselor Ron Temu.
Furthermore, “We do the opposite and believe that hydrating the body fully is the best way to preserve it. That's why the bodies will still look like the day they died – even thousands of years later.”
Apparently, it takes some 90 days for Summum workers to turn a body into a perfectly hydrated mummy.
Thus, they first extract the organs and clean them. They then leave the corpse to marinate in a cocktail of chemicals for roughly 70 days.
Once the mummification process is completed, the body is covered with lanolin, wax, cotton gauze and fiber glass, and carefully tucked away inside a steel or bronze casket.