Ancient Egyptians have long been known to prepare their corpses for the afterlife with gifts of jewelry, clothing, and weaponry -- sometimes confusingly so. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences studied an even more practical inclusion for revered burials: food. Specifically, researchers Salima Ikram of the American University of Cairo and Universal of Brisol professors Katherine Clark and Richard Evershed uncovered how ancient Egyptians attempted to make meat last forever, International Business Times reported.

According to their research, Egyptians typically prepared after-life feasts only for royal members of society, and they rarely included vegetables. Death chefs used organic balming methods, such as drying or animal fat, to preserve many types of meat and all sorts of cuts, from beef ribs to goat legs to calf meat, according to the IB Times. Different meats dictated specific preservation techniques. Goat legs required animal fat; duck meat was dried.

The most elaborate technique came from a tomb dated between 1386 B.C. and 1349 B.C., the oldest of the four samples inspected by the three researchers. Whomever left cattle rib for Tjuiu, an Egyptian noblewoman, and her courtier Yuya, used a balm combining animal fat and resin from a Pastacia tree, a desert shrub, The Huffington Post reported. Ikram and his team were surprised to find the type of resin, considered a luxury item during the time of Tjuiu's and Yuya's burial and not used in human mummification for another 600 years after their death.

As you can see from the photos, the meat was wrapped in cloth and stored in its own "lunch box" -- basically a miniature version of the corpse. The oldest "meat mummy" ever found was from 3300 BC, according to The Huff Post. Like other gifts of burial, such as gold and jewelry, the amount of meat seemed to correlate with status: King Tutankhamen ("Tut") was amply supplied with 48 packages of meat and poultry following his death in 1323 B.C.