Furthermore, several archaeometric studies in the past 15 years confirmed the writings of the above-mentioned historical records. In these historical records, different classical authors refer to the use of radish oil exclusively, either as a fuel for oil lamps or as a staple food, and according to these texts, it was one of the most common oil crop commodities in Roman Egypt, due to its preferable properties such as the quantity of produced product compared to sesame, castor and other oils, its nutritional value, and most importantly, lower taxes. In the context of studying the cultural, economic, political, and religious past of ancient Egypt, the use of a cruciferous oil derived from the seeds of specific Brassicaceae species (such as radish and/or rapeseed), is mentioned in written historical sources, mostly in the works of the Roman historian Pliny ( Naturalis Historia, books XV:7 and XIX:26) during the 1st century AD, and in several 5th century AD papyri documents (P.Mich XI: 613). In this regard, this study was able to report a practice until now unmentioned in the scientific literature, namely, the use of cruciferous oil, derived from seeds of Brassicaceae plants, in animal mummification. The results of this study revealed that the majority of the analyzed embalming substances sampled from six gazelle mummies from Kom Mereh were complex mixtures of plant oils, animal fats, conifer resin, and beeswax. Furthermore, in order to identify more specific compounds such as bitumen and beeswax in studied balms, each sample was subjected to a solid phase extraction (SPE) and saponification separation process, respectively. All samples were analyzed for the presence of inorganic and organic matter applying a multi-analytical approach based on Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In this study, nine samples of embalming matter were extracted from six gazelle mummies from the archaeological site of Kom Mereh (modern village of Komir), dated to the Roman period of dominance in ancient Egypt. The study of animal mummification in ancient Egypt has recently received increasing attention from a number of modern scholars given the fact that this part of ancient Egyptian funerary and religious history is a practice yet to be fully understood.
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