Index
What's mummificationAncient Egyptians knew and mastered many sciences; they discovered more advanced things than what we know now in many sciences known to us, all that besides the sciences that are completely unknown to us like mummification.
What's mummification:
Mummification is preserving the body sound after death and it is one of the important matters according to the ancient Egyptian belief, where the body should be preserved until the soul returns to continue his life happily in the afterlife.
The development of Mummification:
The first efforts made to preserve dead bodies were leaving it to natural dehydration supplied by the sand of the deserts and Egypt’s climate. The bodies were wrapped in animal leathers, which were necessary to protect the bodies from wild animals. Corpses were put in wooden boxes or coffins and usually the dead was squatting.
It is believed that the dead was put in a squatting position to be similar to the most natural forms of sleeping and this shows that death was considered as a sort of sleep and rest.
The first steps of mummification, when they reached the most perfect stage of maturity and experience, was taking the brain out of the skull and also the internal organs and the heart were taken out and treated by special materials and they were divided on four canopic jars which looked like Horus’s four sons, Ims et, hapy, Daamtef and kebehsenof.
The organs were replaced by some mummification materials after cleaning twice, then the body was salted by natron (one of the materials abundant in Natron valley and Salinos west Fayyoum, and it was also used in cleaning houses).
Then the body was washed and wrapped by linen bands saturated with resin. Mummification needed many materials, about 15. For example beeswax to cover the ears, eyes, the outlets of the nose and the mouth, and the cut made by he surgeon in the abdomen, onions palm wine, natron, sawdust, tar and asphalt, ...etc
The fundamental material in mummification and some of these materials were brought from abroad. After these steps were finished the body became like a skeleton covered by a yellow – coloured skin, but the face from which the organs had been taken out kept its shape by a golden plate and was covered by a mask of gold, and the deed’s book was put between his legs. This process took about 2 months and a half.
There was another method for mummification which is not different from the first one, where the soft tissues were taken out and the body was immersed in natron and soaked in oils, fats and perfumes and all the kinds of amulet were put on it Guts were replaced by balls of linen but the heart remained in its place, and the guts were preserved in the four canopic jars and the brain was taken out through the outlets by a metal hook. Some sand was put under the skin to preserve the original shape. Some materials such as wax, myrrh, cedar oil, honey, olive oil, oil banum and linen bands and wraps were used in mummification. The greatest mummified was the god “ Anobis ".