鈥淭hree years ago, a mummy was unrolled in London, and in its hand was a small
bag of Wheat. Some grains of it were sown and vegetated. Its produce has again
been sown . . . and has produced an average of 38 ears or spikes for each grain
sown. To be sold in packets of 10 grains each at 拢1 per packet . . . 鈥� In
1843, when The Gardeners鈥� Chronicle ran this ad, the public was crazy
about ancient Egypt. And nothing was more fascinating than the notion that
鈥渕ummy wheat鈥�, grain discovered in the tombs of kings鈥攐ften in model
granaries鈥攚ould spring to life after thousands of years. At
拢1 a packet, worth 拢60 today, people were paying for something more
than a few stalks of wheat.
From the start, botanists dismissed the claims as romantic nonsense. Yet the
belief in the astonishing powers of ancient seeds lingers on. In an attempt to
debunk it for good, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have turned to
sophisticated mathematical models to calculate exactly how long grain could
survive in an Egyptian tomb.
You can blame it on Napoleon. When he invaded Egypt in 1798, he took along
175 scholars. Although Napoleon鈥檚 army failed to conquer Egypt, his troop of
intellectuals were triumphant. They 鈥渄iscovered鈥� ancient Egypt and so triggered
a craze that swept the whole of Europe. Fashionable society was soon in the grip
of mummy fever. By the 1840s, the English papers carried regular reports of the
amazing regenerative powers of 鈥渕ummy wheat鈥濃�攇rain discovered in from
tombs up to 6000 years old.
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Some of these ancient seeds produced bumper yields from fat heads with as
many as seven ears. In 1846, The Agricultural Gazette reported
the excitement among members of the Newcastle Farmers鈥� Club when they were shown
an ear of wheat grown from a seed found in an Egyptian mummy case. 鈥淚t is much
more bulky than an English ear, being, in fact, seven English ears rolled into
one!鈥� This ear was more than a miracle of resurrection, pronounced the
Gazette, it was evidence that the biblical story of Pharaoh鈥檚 dream was
true. 鈥淎nd Pharaoh slept and dreamed the second time, and behold seven ears of
corn came up upon one stalk . . . 鈥�
Each claim of success in raising mummy wheat brought a swift counterblast
from botanists. Close examination of the seeds showed that although the outside
looked intact, the embryo within was too badly damaged to germinate. Every
attempt to grow authentic mummy seed failed. The sceptics argued that if anyone
succeeded, then the grain they planted wasn鈥檛 as old as they had been led to
believe.
In one famous instance in 1840, Martin Tupper, a popular writer of the day,
claimed to have raised plants from mummy wheat. His seed came from an impeccable
source鈥攏one other than Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, the most eminent of
English Egyptologists. Later, it turned out that Tupper鈥檚 own gardener had
scattered modern seed among the ancient to ward off disappointment.
There were other reasons why mummy wheat might be more modern than any mummy.
For centuries, ancient tombs had been used to store grain. Mummies were often
shipped to Europe packed in straw, with seed heads still attached. And Egyptian
guides quickly realised that gullible tourists would pay well for grain, and
kept handy supplies hidden in the tombs.
But it was the plants themselves that provided the best case against mummy
wheat. The ancient Egyptians grew two main cereal crops, emmer wheat and barley.
Obviously something was wrong if the seeds grew into oats or maize鈥攕pecies
not present in ancient Egypt. When the plants did turn out to be wheat, it was
usually a modern variety of bread wheat. And when the wheat was the seven-eared
sort that Pharaoh dreamed of, it was invariably rivet wheat, unknown in Egypt at
the time.
Despite all the evidence, the story still wouldn鈥檛 die, much to the annoyance
of Wallis Budge, keeper of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum. For
years, he received two or three letters a week asking if it was possible for
mummy seeds to grow. No, he replied, it was not. In 1897, in an effort to dispel
all doubt, he bought a model granary, which had been excavated from a tomb at
Thebes. The grain inside was 3000 years old. Budge gave some of the wheat to the
director of Kew, who planted it under the watchful eyes of almost the entire
staff. 鈥淭hey waited day after day, week after week, but no shoot of any kind
appeared,鈥� Budge wrote in a letter to The Times. 鈥淎t length after three
months, they turned over the little plots and found that all the grains had
turned to dust.鈥�
In 1933, the press reported a new case of wheat that had sprouted from
ancient seeds: this time the grain came from a 4000-year-old tomb in India.
Would Budge now admit there might be something to this mummy wheat? 鈥淣o
competent botanist believes that ancient Egyptian wheat will germinate,鈥� he
declared in The Times. But lest anyone doubt it, he still had some seed
left and would donate some to any reputable grower willing to test it.
The National Institute of Agricultural Botany took up the challenge, and
reported its findings back to The Times. 鈥淎fter the fourth day, the
grains had become slimy. At the end of 16 days in test, not only had every grain
completely decayed, but a thick growth of mould had spread from them to the
surrounding sand.鈥�
So why do many people, including archaeologists, still believe that these
ancient seeds will grow? This is a question Mark Nesbitt, an archaeobotanist at
Kew, has been pondering for some time. He suspects that although earlier
botanists debunked the idea fairly convincingly, they never provided a proper
explanation for why a seed couldn鈥檛 survive thousands of years if it was kept in
the arid interior of a tomb.
Over the past few decades, scientists working in seed banks have discovered
much about the ageing process inside a seed, and the conditions that will
prolong its life. Most cereals can be stored for centuries if they are partially
dried and kept at subzero temperatures and low humidity, although exactly how
long depends on the species. With the help of artificial ageing experiments,
seed-bank scientists have produced sophisticated models that predict the shelf
life of a seed under given conditions.
At Kew鈥檚 Millennium Seed Bank, John Dickie has now modelled the lifespan of
mummy wheat. Cereals all behave much the same in storage, so Dickie assumed
mummy wheat would deteriorate at a similar rate to modern varieties. Feeding
this data into the model, he then added information about conditions in an
ancient tomb.
One of the best-studied rock tombs is that of Nefertari, the favourite wife
of Ramses II, who lived in the second millennium BC. The relative humidity in
the tomb is a low 16 per cent鈥攊deal for seed storage. But even deep inside
the rock the temperature fluctuates widely, ranging from a low 16 掳C to 28.5
掳C鈥攂ad news for seed survival.
Dickie found that if he started with top-quality seed and the temperature
remained constant at 16 掳C, one grain in a thousand might still germinate
after 236 years. With the temperature sometimes hitting the high 20s, the grain
would all be dead in 89 years. And if the seed was less than perfect to begin
with . . .