The Egyptians were among the first to focus on an afterlife. To get there, a dead person needed his or her body. If it was preserved well, the spirit would reenter it. Then it would bring the body back to life in the next world.
To help the spirit find its body, the Egyptians made the body into a mummy. This process took a lot of time and money. Usually only pharaohs and rich or fancy people became mummies. But even those who couldn’t afford to be made into mummies hoped to go to the afterlife. They thought it was a lot like Egypt, except that the dead lived there forever.

◀ The embalmer removed the intestines, stomach, liver, and lungs. He pulled the brain out through the nose. Only the heart was left in place. That’s because the dead needed their hearts 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. This dried it out and 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. They tore at their clothes, poured dirt in their hair, and wept. Their noise kept evil spirits away.
The mummified body traveled on a funeral boat like this one. That’s how the dead traveled in the underworld. ▶



◀ The most dangerous part of the trip was in the Hall of the Two Truths. The dead person’s heart showed what he’d done. It was weighed on a scale against the feather of truth. Anubis was the 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, it has spoken through 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, however, had been placed on top of others. Next year, the mummies will be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. There, members of the public will be able to see them. According to the Egyptian government, this was one of the biggest and most important discoveries in a hundred years. The mummies of children are especially rare.