Egyptian Mummification



Mummification was one of the most important things of ancient Egyptian culture. To not be mummified was to mean that you could not join the gods in the Afterlife, something the Egyptians most feared. The earliest Egyptians buried the deceased in sand pits in the desert. The heat and dryness of the sand dehydrated the bodies quickly, creating lifelike and natural “mummies”. As time went by, the Egyptians began to burry their dead in coffins to protect them from the wild animals that roamed in the desert. After a time, however, they began to realize that the bodies that were placed in coffins would decay when they were not exposed to the hot, dry sand of the desert. Finally, this civilized people developed a method of preserving bodies so they would remain almost lifelike forever. The process included embalming the bodies and wrapping them in long strips of linen. We have come to know this process as mummification.

Mummification for a pharaoh would take the longest, for he was the living god on Earth. When the reigning pharaoh died, the entire country took part in his funeral. For a person with not as much wealth, it wouldn't take as long and the funeral would be more common. The ka was the "twin" spirit of the dead person. Offerings were made for the dead person so the ka could survive. After each day, the priests who made the offerings would then eat the food so that it would not go rotten.

The process of mummification took over 72 days and nights of tiring work and prayers to the gods and the world beyond. The embalmers were priests dressed as Anubis. The first step was to remove the enternal organs (liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines) and soak them in natron, then rap them in linen and place them in four sacred canopic jars (made of alabaster) with the heads of a jackal, falcon, baboon, and human, symbolizing the 4 sons of Horus:

Duamutef - The jackal, holder of the stomach, guardien of the east.
Qebehsenuef - The falcon, holder of the intestines, guardien of the west.
Hapy - The baboon, holder of the lungs, guardien of the north.
Imseti - The human, holder of the liver, guardien of the south.

To take out the brain, the embalmers used a red-hot poker and slid it up the nose until they reached the skull. Then they made a hole in the skull and slid the poker up farther until they reached the brain. They cut the brain into little peices and slid them out through the nasal cavity; the embalmers then threw it away because they didn't realize that it had been used for thinking (they believed that the heart had been the source of their intelligence). The heart was left in the body so that when the deceased person entered the Afterlife to be judged by the gods, Anubis (god of embalming) could weigh his/her heart on the sacred scale against the Feather Of Ma'at (Feather of Truth). The body was then washed in wine and soaked for forty days and nights in spices and a salt called natron, which came from the desert.

After the forty days and nights, the embalmers would remove the body from the natron, for it was all dried out, and then stuff it with linen clothes soaked with resin so that the body wouldn't sag in certain places such as the nose, the brain, or the eyes. Then the body would be painted in a perfume called saffron. Then the embalmers would place on top of the body amulets and charms so that the deceased would be protected from the dangers during is journey to the next world. Then the body would be wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen, which took about fifteen-twenty days, and placed in a coffin painted to look like the dead man (the pharaoh's was made of gold). But before placing the body in the coffin, the emblamers placed ontop of the mummy an elaborate death mask, sometimes made out of gold and precious stones, constructed to imatate the visage of the deceased person.

There are those who say that the embalmers who carried out the process of mummification were all men. Many of them, however, were indeed women, though they tended not to do much lifting of the heavier objects. But when the body had shrunk, it was light enough to enable them to do any lifting that might have been necessary. They tended to wrap the organs or place the amulets on the body rather than lift it.

During the funeral, women were often paid to cry and beat their bodies; they were called mourners. The funeral of a common man was often as simple as one that might take place today (only friends and family, along with the paid mourners, attended). But when a pharaoh died, the entire country took part in the period of mourning. The Anubis-dressed priests and the priests of Osiris would chant spells and perform rituals to help the dead reach the afterlife. A priest would then perform the Opening of the Mouth ceremony over the deseased.

Death for the Egyptians wasn't an end. It was a new beginning of eternal life where they had gods, and where kings sailed the golden ship with Ra across a lake of flames in the sky, rising in New Life each day, with the sun...