Ancient Egyptian Mummification Process

• 16 / 5 / 2023

Mummification in ancient Egypt was associated with the idea of immortality, which the Egyptians believed in. The great archaeologist breasted says that no ancient and no modern people believed in the idea of life after death like the Egyptians. This was the reason for the interest of the Egyptians in the construction of the huge pyramidal tombs, which were discovered over time, and even the building of the Labyrinth, which was invented by Herodotus Palace and described in his book "history" on the basis that it soon turned out to be a funerary temple of the pyramid of Amenemhat next.

The Egyptians believed that the human body consists of three elements, the first is "khat" means the body, the second is " Ka "(consort or guardian god), and it is born with Man and the body plasma after death so that he defends it in the next life, and historians and researchers believed that " KA " is the placenta that preserves man, which is an embryo. And the next is " BA " means the soul that leaves the body at death and goes to heaven if the deceased was Pharaoh or the spirit of the lower world if he was a commoner, and kindly visits the body from time to time, and the symbol of the Egyptians to her with a bird and a human. Because the Egyptians believed that the sun was born every day in the East and died in the West, so the Western Nile was the favorite place to bury the dead.

It was necessary to provide the deceased with all the possible things he needed, such as eating, drinking, furniture, tools, and decorating the walls of the cemetery with drawings and inscriptions that contained the spirit of life in a way or by means of a technique, and it was also necessary to preserve the entire body shape and maintain it from corruption so that the soul could recognize it after burial, and embalming was necessary imposed by religious beliefs.

Mummification is considered a scientific pride of the Egyptians, who came to it completely by themselves without transferring from any other country or culture in the world. It is not known when the Egyptians discovered the art of mummification, but it is likely that they knew a primitive way to preserve the body in the era of the second dynasty and the knowledge of the archaeology of the guts of the Queen through the guards of the mother of Khufu ( the fourth dynasty), but what remains of the body may have been stolen through the protection of the tombs.

The first mummy discovered by archaeologists was from the era of the Fifth Dynasty and was stored in a museum in London, but the museum was destroyed in an air raid in 1941 during the Second World War. Soon after, many mummies were discovered around the pyramid of amnemahat Al-talt in Fayoum, and it turned out that they belonged to the common people and the mummies were preserved in an elaborate way. And in the era of the modern state, the art of mummification reached its peak and continued until the beginning of the Christian era.

Taxidermy career
Embalming was associated with the priesthood and was a ritual practiced near the temple or the burial and the place where the embalming was done, the Egyptians called it the "purified place" or " tent of the God ". The profession of the chief embalmer was a prestigious profession, but the profession of the one who examined the entrails from the body was an outcast profession in which the inviolability of the deceased's body lay.

Method of embalming
The idea of embalming was based on drying the body and then sealing its pores with insulating materials so that the moisture that caused mold would enter. The process took seventy days with many rituals. In modern times, the myth of the "Curse of the Pharaohs" has spread, and it is said that it affects those who abuse mummies or their tombs. Many of those who believed in it believe that it was because of the spells that were transmitted at the time of the embalming process or the time of burial rituals.

Embalming used to be done in ways related to the physical status of the deceased. The first method that was used to embalm Kings and Nobles was using the steps :

The body of the deceased was landing on its platform, and after two the embalmer was opening the brain from the head by means of a special machine, and after two he was picking up a knife and making an opening in the north of the abdomen of the deceased, and after two he was running and running, and those present threw bricks at him and cursed him, because they believed that the evil spirit that was the cause of death was stuck in the body of the embalmer.
The head of the embalmers was beige and emptied the belly from the entrails, but the heart was in its place, its presence was necessary for the return of life to the deceased, and it was usually stuffed with linen saturated with glue and parfaits or bitumen, and after two the side opening was sewn or it was filled with it and the nostrils, the eyes and the eyes with glue or molten wax.
The intestines were washed with palm oil and then filled with Palmer, aison and onions and smashed in special vessels, and in rare cases they returned the intestines to the abdomen again. Strangely enough, there were mummies that came together without intestines, but there was no opening in the abdomen, and until now it is not known who they were looking at.
The body is dried by burying it in natron ( sodium carbonate, which contains grills of table salt), and most of the curls were located at the time of drying, they were fixed with a thread or with a small flame or from any other metal, and if any limb broke at the time of embalming, prostheses were used and installed in place of the broken one to preserve the structure of the entire body, and mummy was discovered in Fayoum.
After lifting the body from the Natron, it was washed with a salt solution and perfumed, and any skinning was treated in it, and then the whole house was smeared with liquid glue and long strips of linen dipped in glue were damaged on it, and then it was placed in a coffin with the body of the mummified body and the burial process was completed.