Cannibalism: British royalty dined on human flesh (but don't worry it was 300 years ago)

An amazing article about this incredible behavior by many british royals during the centuries. I never heard something like this and I'm really shocked! Dr Richard Sugg, from Durham University, delves into the dark world of medicinal cannibalism in his new book "Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires".
Yes, Medicinal cannibalism: Both Queen Mary II and her uncle King Charles II both took distilled human skull on their deathbeds in 1698 and 1685 respectively, according to Dr Sugg.
Please read all!
www.dailymail.co.uk...

They have long been famed for their love of lavish banquets and rich recipes. But what is less well known is that the British royals also had a taste for human flesh.
A new book on medicinal cannibalism has revealed that possibly as recently as the end of the 18th century British royalty swallowed parts of the human body

To Mod: feel free to move in appropriate forum.

The magic law of association would be behind this bizarre practice. Alchemists, using arabic translations of greek and latin medical texts, concluded that bitumen was beneficial to long life, bitumen was used on egyptian mummies. Not just the royalty but all of the upper and merchant classes had the money to buy esoteric ingrediants to prolong life.

this is merely a symptom of something else, not only they engaged in cannibalism, they engaged in cannibalism as part of witchcraft.

i think that both witchcraft and alchemy were practised by the elites, and since they worked to some extent, the practices were demonized so the general population would not engage in it, because the practices themselves would be and still are practised in secret.

but that was then, imagine what things they engage in now. old habits die hard...

but here's a good example of european's morbidity and obsession with death.


www.clementcelma.com...

i've been here once, and i could not stop to think that probably most of those skulls came from people who did not exactly die of old age or sickness.

the hansel adn gretel story rings a bell

Did they know what they were consuming? The people preparing the “medicine” may not have divulged what was in it.

Today many people take medicine and have no idea what chemicals, herbs or whatever were combined together to make the medicines that they consume. I would not find it hard to believe that the monarchs, upper class or whatever that consumed these concoctions, had no idea what they were putting in their bodies.

If a person unknowingly consumes part of another human, does that necessarily make them a cannibal?

for those who don't know about the aghori, their practices should be taken into reference when reading this thread.

cogitz.com...

The Aghoris are members of a Hindu sect who worship Shiva (a major Hindu god and one aspect of Trimurti – the Hindu trinity), whom they see as the supreme god. Because they believe that Shiva created everything they consider nothing to be bad. For this reason they engage in a variety of sexual practices (for example they perform a secret Tantric ritual involving sex with a lower caste, menstruating woman during which the Aghori becomes Shiva and his partner Shiva’s female energy), they drink alcohol, take drugs, and eat meat. Nothing is considered taboo. But the thing that makes their ancient traditions bizarre is that they are also practicing cannibals and their temples are cremation grounds.

i do respect their practices, as viewed thorugh their philosophy, i would not try it for myself, but i respect their belief and their right to do so.

its part of my own view of the world aswell, if everything came from the same piece of matter(big bang or creation whatever) then nothing is really a taboo or forbidden, it's part of the whole.

theyll eat your pineal glands......hey, thats what the real caviar is...black peoples pineal glands....just a thought lol

reply to post by Arken


I think the source material is taking the situation out of context and is a bit sensationalized. It wasn't just the 'Royals" who practiced this but anyone of means and those who believed it to be a legitimate form of preventative medicine. Research Early European and later Victorian era medicinal folk remedies.

"EATING MUMMY"

There is a tradition dating back to at least 1000 A.D. in which Arabs and later Europeans engaged in the practice of "eating mummy." This practice was widespread in Egypt and Western Europe and it consisted of countless ancient African mummies being burned, ground up and made into a kind of powder in order to be eaten. This incredible act of cannibalism was considered an effective medical practice and folk remedy. The belief became widely prevalent that cures could be obtained by eating ground-up preserved bodies. "Eating mummy" was considered effective in treating contusions, coughs, epilepsy, migraines, ulcers, cases of poison, and as a general panacea.

Mummies or fragments of mummies were taken from their tombs and sent to Cairo and Alexandria, where merchants sent the ground-up parts all over Western Europe. In the European Middle Ages and Renaissance mummy trafficking was widespread. Egyptian mummies were so sought after that the chaplain to Queen Catherine Medici of France made a special trip to Egypt in 1549 and, together with some physicians from Italy, broke into a number of tombs around Sakkara in a quest for mummies to use in various medicines. Catherine's father-in-law, King Francis I of France, also carried ground-up mummy in a pouch around his waist at all times in case of an emergency.

The mummy madness was such that if a genuine ancient Egyptian mummy were not available, local Arabs would use the corpses of executed criminals or those who had died from disease. They used these modern substitutes to meet the high demand for mummy powder, despite the protest against this barbaric practice by some physicians, among them the French surgeon Ambroise Pare', who stated, "It causes great pain in their stomachs, gives them evil smelling breath and brings about serious vomiting."

"Eating mummy" had a long and respectable tradition as a medicinal remedy. This uncivilized European and Arab tradition of eating mummified human flesh was part of a flourishing trade and thus did not die out until last century. It is impossible to calculate the many thousands of African mummies that ended up in the stomachs of Europeans and Arabs.

reply to post by Arken
Nice thread; I haven't read about this before and it's interesting stuff.

The book looks like it's worth buying for a taste (no pun) of the macabre. If we think about some of the obscure fads entertained by Royal courts over the millennia, it's not at all surprising that they indulged in such odd practices. I think that royals and aristocrats were sometimes so removed from reality that they could fall prey to conmen and mystics. On top of that, losing the 'favour of the Court' could result in being imprisoned and losing your property and status. That being the case, how many friends would dare to point out how ridiculous it was to be eating powdered Egyptian mummies?

Superstition was as rife amongst the rich and powerful as it was with the uneducated masses. Whereas the revolting customs of the public at executions have been widely documented, similar activities by aristocrats must have happened quietly and discreetly.

If you're interested, cannibalism has been shown to run the risk of transmitting serious illness like CJD (human mad-cow disease). A famous example is the Kuru illness of Papua New Guinea....

In the mid-1960s Alpers collected post-mortem brain tissue samples from an 11-year-old Fore girl, Kigea, who had died of kuru. He took these samples to Gajdusek in the USA, who then injected two chimpanzees with the infected material. Within two years, one of the chimps, Daisy, had developed kuru, demonstrating that the unknown disease factor was transmitted through infected biomaterial and that it was capable of crossing the species barrier to other primates.

It's gotta make you wonder how much of the in-bred stupidity and madness of the European Royal Courts was caused by chewing on the dead?

S&F

reply to post by Arken


Nice tthread friend.

But, this is not news. The Royals and the Government have been feeding off us for thousand years.

S&F

Originally posted by Cheerfulnihilist
The magic law of association would be behind this bizarre practice. Alchemists, using arabic translations of greek and latin medical texts, concluded that bitumen was beneficial to long life, bitumen was used on egyptian mummies. Not just the royalty but all of the upper and merchant classes had the money to buy esoteric ingrediants to prolong life.

An excellent summary, and an accurate one.

I think the title of the news article is overly sensationalized. There were occasional cannibalistic practices in Europe (often during famines) but the impression given by the title is that they went out and killed people just to chow down on them -- which didn't happen.

Body parts of the executed were used in a variety of ways. One of the stranger ones was to use an executed man's hand as a "candle" which would prevent you from being seen as you robbed a house.

Ahhhhh thats why they all look retarded

The Aghoris are members of a Hindu sect who worship Shiva (a major Hindu god and one aspect of Trimurti – the Hindu trinity), whom they see as the supreme god. Because they believe that Shiva created everything they consider nothing to be bad. For this reason they engage in a variety of sexual practices (for example they perform a secret Tantric ritual involving sex with a lower caste, menstruating woman during which the Aghori becomes Shiva and his partner Shiva’s female energy), they drink alcohol, take drugs, and eat meat. Nothing is considered taboo. But the thing that makes their ancient traditions bizarre is that they are also practicing cannibals and their temples are cremation grounds.

Sounds like these guys know how to party!

Although not so sure about that red tide action...and our "bad taste" to other animals is kind of a defense mechanism, so not so sure about that either.

I seriously doubt most royals even considered what was in a particular treatment.

Body parts of the executed were used in a variety of ways. One of the stranger ones was to use an executed man's hand as a "candle" which would prevent you from being seen as you robbed a house.

Ewww....the old "Hand of Glory".....

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Arken

 

I think the source material is taking the situation out of context and is a bit sensationalized.

I agree. But from a completely different angle. When it comes to accusations of cannibalism and archeology sometimes people mistake burial practices as evidence of cannibalism.

For example, a group of people extending from the Aegean, Cyprus, Levant, Palestine, Egypt, Spain, France, England and Ireland had a burial practice known as excarnation. That meant that after a person dies they had two procedures to remove the flesh from the body. The first process including painting the dead body with a substance and allowing vultures (or hounds) devour the flesh off the human body. The second process was painting the dead body with a substance, burying it and worms and vermin would devour the flesh and then they'd dig the body back up. Once the flesh was eaten off the bones, the bones were cleaned and bundled and usually buried in their own home. Like underneath their own sleeping area or in the cornerstones of their home. In some cases they'd be buried in walls. The skulls were polished and kept separate. If the person was important their skull would be placed in a public shrine. But most would have their own family's skulls in a little shrine in their home.

The process of cleaning the bones to polish them (after defleshed) usually looks like eating-tool utensil marks and especially if vultures were used in the process of excarnation (or hounds) there would sometimes be teeth marks on the bones. Many, many archeologists over time have mistaken excarnated remains as evidence of "cannibalism".

Since skulls were placed in shrines in homes, (after defleshed, cleaned and polished), the skulls were said to possess magical qualities or even healing properties. But it's all a burial practice, not cannibalism at all.

So if royalty in England was doing any sort of ceremony with cleaned and distilled skulls, it's not necessarily cannibalism but more like that particular royal line had roots or was directly descended from the group of people who excarnated their dead (who first colonized England, Ireland and Scotland c. 7000 B.C.E.)

reply to post by MapMistress


LOL! You beat me to it, I was about to mention excarnation when I was reading the above posts I would consider not only the medicinal things mentioned, but an old pagan practice perhaps handed down by the "Royals" ancestors involving some sort of excarnation. A kind of habit... we have this in my own culture.. though no sort of cannibalism, not even symbolic Some things we arent sure why we do it, but we do it. Sometimes stories are made up for why we do it, but they do not explain it fully or precisely enough. Some things Ive read about the interior life of the royals have been by ex servants and workmen or passive observers who perhaps mistook or didnt understand the practices.




For those all weirded out.... how far is this from carrying around body parts of your dead saints or the Catholic idea of transubstantiation ( through genuflection and "spells") where you literally turn ( by magic) the cracker and wine into the flesh and blood of your christ and eat/drink it ? In your churches a dead man hangs on the wall and you wear the effigy of the dead around your necks. Best consider that to those not of the Christian culture, the practice is abhorrent and odd.... and rivals most "pagan" death cults.