Ordinary fryer chickens will have the chance to live on in eternity. Or at least until they smell so bad they get thrown out with the garbage.
Mummification was used by ancient Egyptians to preserve bodies for the afterlife and, in their study of Egyptians, Scarselli students from Maria Falconieri's sixth-grade class are using a similar process to mummify chickens.
Michael Hoyt, Scott Nelson, Haley Wasilchuk and Tommy Tiburski were the second period Memphis team preparing their potential mummy chicken Thursday.
"The Egyptians pulled the livers and organs out of the dead bodies," said Haley. "They put a hook up the nose and pulled out the brains. They used spices so it wouldn't stink."
The Memphis team, equipped with purple surgical gloves, washed the whole fryer in the classroom sink. Michael was the first to reach inside the chicken's cavity for giblets.
"Can I have the heart?" said Michael as he smelled the innards of the half-frozen chicken. "It smells, trust me."
"I told my friends I wasn't ever going to dissect a frog," said Haley, pointing at a stray bit of chicken guts on the table.
"It smells bad," said Tommy.
The Egyptians used a naturally occurring salt, natron, to dry out the bodies in mummy preparation but the students used Morton salt.
The Egyptians used spices and resin for their mummies. The Scarselli students used Italian spices and celery salt. Michael's choice was taco seasoning.
While it took the ancients seven days to mummify a body, the amateur mummy-makers will keep the salted, spiced chickens in sealable plastic bags in their classroom for 5-6 weeks or until no more moisture comes out of them.
"They'll wrap the chicken mummies in linens and, if the kids want, they can wrap jewels in them because the Egyptians put jewels in with their mummies," said Falconieri.
The Egyptians preserved human organs separately in jars.
"The jars were called 'cerebrum?' 'Cerebellum?' No, 'canopic' jars," said Scott. "We decided not to keep the organs. It would be messy."
The Memphis team's chicken organs went into the trash.
"Dry under the wings," said Falconieri. "What would happen if the Egyptians didn't?"
"You would go into the afterlife with rotten, moldy armpits," said Michael.
"The Egyptians got resin from a pine tree in modern-day Yemen to make a hard shell on the mummy to keep bacteria out," said Scott.
With his purple-gloved hands, Michael massaged the taco seasoning, red pepper, bay leaves and salt into the chicken's skin.
"I love this part when my mom cooks it," he said. "Open 'er up. We've got to make sure the spices and salt are all inside and outside."
"This is the hard part, to get everything covered with salt," said Tommy. "Get under the wings, armpits, whatever you want to call it. You've got to use enough salt, dude."
"The salt will make it shrivel up and go...," said Scott doing his best impression of a puckered and pickled chicken.
Then the team did something the ancient Egyptians probably didn't do to their human mummies: They bounced the chicken on the floor before they got it into the bag.
The Memphis team's chicken is added to the 15 other potential chicken mummies lined up on the classroom countertop undergoing the drying process.
"They get hard when they're done," said Falconieri. "We would try to bury them as the Egyptians did but I'm afraid the coyotes would get to them. We'll keep one from each period to open at the end of the year to see how they survived."
Besides learning about mummies, the class is studying the history, art work and cultures of the ancient Egyptians.
"The pharaoh was the top king and was part god," said Michael. "They'd bury their stuff with them so they'd have it all in the afterlife."
"Pharaoh's scribes did everything for him," said Scott. "His day was boring. On his day off he rode around in his chariot beating people."
