*~Egyptians: The Masters of Mummification~*

Ancient Egyptians are perhaps the best known Mummy-makers, though initially, it was their climate, not their skill, that preserved the dead. Arid desert winds and blazing hot sand occasionally dried corpses out quickly enough to mummify them. In fact, the oldest-known Egyptian Mummy, dated around 3500 B.C., it is believed to have been created in this way. These early efforts at embalming were crude, but reflected the culture's emerging beliefs about preserving the dead to achieve eternal life.

Initially, mummification was so expensive that it was a privilege enjoyed only by the Pharaoh and a few favourites. Everybody else was given a simple grave burial in one of the vast cemeteries or "necropolises" of the time. But the promise of eternal life was so alluring that it wasn't long before wealthy Egyptians began signing up for Mummification too. By 1550 B.C., every Egyptian who could afford it was mummified.

The ancient Egyptians believed that a person's Ka (vital force) and Ba (personality) left the body at the time of death. But they also believed that Ka and Ba could be lured back if an idealized recreation of the body were offered. This reunification of body and spirit was the ticket to the nether world.

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