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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 the body was properly preserved, its 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 created a process called mummification. Turning a body into a mummy was a costly process that took a long time. That’s why 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, which they thought was a place much like Egypt, except that the dead lived forever.
◀ The embalmer removed the intestines, stomach, liver, and lungs and pulled the brain out through the nose. Only the heart was left in place, 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. ▶
▲ To prevent the body from decaying, the embalmer packed it in a salt mix called natron for 40 days to dry it out. Then he wrapped it tightly in long ribbons of resin-soaked linen and returned it 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 under the canopy of a funerary barge as it made its 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. Serving as judge, Anubis threw the hearts of those deemed unworthy to the Devourer of the Dead, who gobbled them up. Those judged fit moved 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, 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 male, the hands are closed. If it’s a female, the hands are open.) The coffins were found just a few feet under the sand, with some having 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.
