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Journal:
As I walk into the workshop that I work in I get ready to do my job. My work place is located on the left banks of the Nile river, where sometimes the priest watch me. I get everything out and lay it next to the dead body that I have to work on. I don’t have an ordinary job but it’s what I like so I do it. Today I am going to mummify King Tut’s body. This is not my first time mummifying a body before. I have to do it to others as well like wealthy people and other pharaohs that were well known or wealthy. Mummification is not an easy job but you learn from it. Here are some steps that I have to do when I mummify a dead body…
Mummification
Steps to mummifying a dead body
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First they would put them on a table and the embalmers, the mummy makers would clean the body with water and natron, so the body could be purified an its symbolizing that they are starting their rebirth. Then they would shave all the hairs off the dead body. |
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The Embalmers before taking out all the inter body organs they went out the nostril of the body and they dragged the brains out. They would take the brain out because they thought the brain didn't men anything and that the heart did everything. So they would pitch the brain and keep the heart in the body. |
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After they did that they would take the liver, stomach, intestines, and the lungs out. And all of that was stuffed into one of the canopic jars. A canopic jar was jars that contained the important organs in the body. there were four jars and all four of them had the heads of the Horus sons on them. |
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After everything that was taken out they would dry out the body by burying them in sand and rags or in dry grass. They would sprinkle a chemical that would dry the body out. The chemical that they used was called natron. Natron wasn't discovered in till the fourth Dynasty. Sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and salt was in natron. They would bury them after all that and waited forty days to go back to it. |
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After the forty days of drying out the body, all the stuff they stuffed into the body was taking out but they put sawdust in the head sometimes to make it look more lively. Then the skin of the body was softened and smelled sweet. The embalmers after they took the stuff out they would rub oils, spices, and perfumes on the skin to keep it fresh. |
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They would attach the nails by threading it to the fingers and they would take out the dead bodies eyes and put in glass eyes. |
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Then the embalmers would wrap the body in linen bandages that also came with jewels and charms to protect the person for the afterlife. |
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Sometimes they would after everything was done and nothing else was needed they would paint a face on the mummy over the bandages. Because sometimes they wee messed up or it needed it or they paid for a face to be on there. |
The word mummy comes from a word that is like tar and this word is bitumen. Arabs when they first saw the mummy’s they thought they looked like bitumen and then they came up with the word mummy from that. Mummifying was very expensive that’s why at first the pharaoh’s and wealthy people could do it because they could afford it. Then everyone started doing it because it became popular. After it became a popular thing they would mummify body’s cheaper, but not as good, and they still did the expensive ones that were good. Then they mummified the body and did everything the body was placed into 3 wooden coffins that were one inside another and then finally into a plain box. That plain box was called a sarcophagus.
They believed that one day the world would end, and as we know that they weren’t wrong, and that the dead would travel to an afterlife where they would stay forever. They would try to mummify the dead body’s because they didn’t want the body’s to rot because they thought if the body would rot then it couldn’t go into the afterlife without all its body parts. So if anything did rot away they would put a cloth or a piece of wood in for its place so the body could go into the afterlife now. Even today you could tell if that mummy was fat or had freckles just by looking at it. Egyptians made it important that the bodies was preserved for them to continue the afterlife.
They didn't just mummify people, they mummified animals too. You wouldn't think so but if they loved their pet so much they would mummify them. In the picture above there are two dogs that are mummified in there. But some of the time they just mummified the animals because it was in honor of a god. They would sacrifice the animal and then mummify it to honor their god. They sacrificed dogs for the god named Anubis, Anubis was the god that did the embalming, They would sacrifice and mummify a cat for Bastet, that was the goddess of the cats.
