|
How Did The Egyptians Preserve Mummies? |
|
A mummy, as you know, is a dead body that has been preserved. The word “mummy” comes from the Arabic and means “a body preserved by wax or tar.” Now, why should the Egyptians want to preserve the body of the dead?
The reason is that they believed in life after death, and so they wanted to prepare for it. They thought of the soul as a bird with a human face that could fly around by day but must return to the tomb at night for fear of evil spirits. The body was therefore preserved so that the soul could recognize it and know which tomb to enter.
Before about 3000 B.C., the Egyptians buried their dead in a curled-up position in the hot sand of the desert, and the sand preserved the bodies. Later, important persons were buried in tombs cut from the rock. But the pyramids and rock tombs were not so dry as the desert sand, so they had to develop some way of preserving the bodies in the tombs. This is why they developed the art of mummification. |
|
|
When a person died, the brain, digestive organs, and lungs were re moved. These were preserved separately and placed in four vases called “canopic jars.” In later times, they were replaced in the body.
Then the body was treated with salts. The salts, put inside the body, together with the dryness of the desert air, took out the moisture. When the body had been dried out, it was bathed, rubbed with resin from pine trees, and wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen. All this took 70 days.
In the meantime, carpenters were making the mummy case. If the man had been rich and important, a number of mummy cases were made, each one fitting neatly inside the next. Artists decorated the cases with many bright colors. The walls of the tomb were decorated with texts and pictures which told the story of the man’s life. Next, all the things that had made the man comfortable in his lifetime were collected. These were placed in his tomb. And in this way, the Egyptians believed they had prepared the man for his next life. |
|
