Continuing with the subject I initially touched upon with my article on the creepy necrophilic relationship between King Herod and his deceased honey, Mariamne, let us talk about mellification. Despite the fact that my spellcheck keeps changing it to “mollification,” mellification is a real word. It is the process of preserving a dead body in honey for medicinal purposes. There are written accounts dating back to the 1500s, but I theorize that the process goes back much farther. Is that why Herod had his beloved mellified? Because, in addition to wanting to boff her corpse, he wanted to create some tasty human mummy confection, as it was called? Mellified human, you see, is supposed to cure all manner of ills if ingested or slathered on the skin.
As with the process of self-mummification, mellification typically involved the active participation of the person who was to become the human candy cane, beginning some weeks or months before that person’s death. The would-be honey mummy would eat nothing but honey, bathe in honey, until he died. Then he would be buried in honey, the casket or sarcophagus would be sealed up for a century or so to allow everything to “ripen,” and then voila! Mummy candy! Good for what ails ya!