A short history of heart-burial

Content warning: this article contains photos of human remains and descriptions of the treatment of bodies after death.

If you died tomorrow in a place far from your home, you would likely be embalmed by replacing your blood with formaldehyde, a highly toxic chemical designed to temporarily preserve your body, then kept cool during a flight home on a commercial aeroplane. However, although this problem has existed through time, modern embalming techniques and planes have not.

A Chinchorro mummy wearing a clay mask © ItsItten (cc-by-sa/2.0)

Preserving a body is something humans have been attempting for a long time. The body of Lady Dai, a member of ancient Chinese nobility, was intentionally (and remarkably successfully) preserved over 2000 years ago. The most famous of the Egyptian mummies, Tutankhamun, was mummified over 3000 years ago. The oldest-known intentionally prepared mummies are the Chinchorro mummies, some of whom died over 7000 years ago.

However, mummification relies on being in a very dry environment and would not be practical for moving a body.

11th-Century crusader Godfrey of Bouillon died and was buried in Jerusalem

In the early medieval era, many high-profile warriors died fighting in the crusades and needed transporting home for burial.