We now know that post-desiccation a combination of oils and linens were used or wrap and preserve. Later, 20th Century studies using GC-MS found no evidence for beeswax or bitumen but instead found degradation products from conifer resin acids. Such a wet method would have been odiferous and accelerated putrefaction, thus counterproductive to the preservation of the body, although it makes for good Hollywood images. Granville had deduced that 'the body must have been plunged into a vessel containing a liquefied mixture of wax and bitumen and kept there for some hours or days, over a gentle fire'. This study documents a famous unwrapping and dissection of a mummy by Augustus Granville, during the peak of mummy mania in 1821.

This now-debunked theory comes from studies such as the1821 work on the 'Granville mummy,' held in the British Museum. Others with a more starry-eyed bent, believe that pre-wrapping the body was immersed in vats containing a natrun solution and coated with bitumen. After drying the body was wrapped in linen. Dry natrun would be sprinkled over the body, perhaps with sawdust as an absorbent. Some argue it was used as a desiccant after the removal of organs, in a way similar to the contemporary method for 'salting' fish. There is some popular debate over the method in which the natrun was used for mummification by the ancient Egyptians. Natrun residues are found not only in tombs and in pits, along with other discarded embalming materials, but also forms nodules and residues in the mummies themselves. For purification and preservation, natrun was preferred over pure halite as it chemically attacks and destroys grease and fat, and so is a superior drying agent (as is sodium borate). There is some evidence that the ancient Egyptians artificially precipitated natrun by isolating shallow basins of salt lake waters for faster evaporation, as is still done in parts of the Faiyum depression today.

Lake natron mummy