Alan Billis

Alan Billis ( – January 2011) was a British taxi driver who posthumously became the subject of a 2011 scientific experiment to replicate ancient Egyptian mummification techniques. Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, Billis volunteered to donate his body to the project led by archaeologist Joann Fletcher and chemist Stephen Buckley. His body was successfully mummified using methods based on archaeological research from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt and is housed at the Gordon Museum of Pathology in London.

Biography Billis was a taxi driver from Torquay who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009. He was married to his wife, Jan Billis, for 36 years. After reading a news article about the search for a terminally ill body donor for a mummification experiment which would be made into a documentary for Channel 4, he volunteered his body to the project. According to his wife, Billis was not particularly interested in Egyptology before the project.

Mummification Following his death in January 2011, the mummification process was carried out by a team including chemist Stephen Buckley and archaeologist Joann Fletcher.

The procedure began with the removal of internal organs excluding the heart and brain through an incision, which were then placed in a jar.

Much of the media coverage of the mummification erroneously claimed that it was the first known attempt in approximately 3,000 years to apply the full process to a human; however, a similar attempt was made, in 1994, by Egyptologist Bob Brier and pathologist Ronald Wade to a 76-year-old man who died of a heart attack.

Billis's mummified remains are housed in the Gordon Museum of Pathology.