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The Egyptian religion was one of the first to stress life after death. To get to the afterlife, a dead person needed his or her body. If it was properly preserved, the spirit would reenter it and bring it to life in the next world.
To make sure the spirit could find and recognize the body, the Egyptians invented mummification. Turning a body into a mummy cost a lot and took a long time. So it was usually done only for pharaohs and members of the highest social classes. But even those who couldn’t afford a mummy makeover hoped to go to the afterlife. They thought it was a place much like Egypt, except that the dead lived forever.
◀ The embalmer removed the corpse’s intestines, stomach, liver, and lungs. He pulled the brain out through the nose. Only the heart was left in place, because the dead needed their heart to get into the next life.
Putting the body into a coffin was the last step in the embalming process. The rich had elaborate coffins. ▶
▲ The embalmer packed a body in a salt mix called natron for 40 days to dry it out. This kept it from decaying, Then he wrapped it tightly in long ribbons of resin-soaked linen. After that, he gave it back to the family for burial. Anubis, the god of mummification (pictured), prepares a body for burial.
◀ Families hired women mourners to follow the coffin, making noise to keep evil spirits away. They tore at their clothes, poured dirt in their hair, and wept.
The mummified body traveled under the canopy of a funerary barge. The dead floated on such boats as they made their way through the underworld. ▶
◀ The most dangerous part of the journey occurred in the Hall of the Two Truths. Here, the dead person’s heart, which bore a record of his past deeds, was weighed on a scale against the feather of truth. Anubis served as judge. If a heart failed the test, he threw it to the Devourer of the Dead, who gobbled it up. People who did pass the test kept going, on to the kingdom of Osiris.
▲ The past speaks to us—recently, by way of an archaeological find in Luxor, Egypt. Reported in October 2019, the find includes 30 perfectly preserved, 3,000-year-old mummies. Inside the carved and brightly colored coffins are 23 men, 5 women, and 2 children. They’re all wrapped in cloth, just as the Egyptians had left them. (The gender of a mummy can be determined by the way its hands are carved on the coffin. If the mummy is a man, the hands are closed. If it’s a woman, the hands are open.) The coffins were found in two rows, just a few feet under the sand. Some had been placed on top of others. Next year, they’ll be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza for public display. According to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, this was one of the biggest and most important discoveries in a hundred years, particularly because it included the mummies of children.
