The Mummification Process and Its Meaning to Ancient Egypt free essay sample

Student name Instructor Institution Date Due The Mummification Process and its Meaning to Ancient Egypt Mummification process Apparently the first issue that many people tend to imagine after the words â€Å"mummy† and â€Å"Egypt† are mentioned is a given body that is wrapped in strips of cloth. However when considering the country and especially a couple of years back, the then mummies, notably the first ones, were naturally made in the desert sand. With their belief system developing, ancient Egyptians adopted another strategy of artificially making mummies. Actually this explains why they deliberately kept bodies of preserved bodies of those people who had just died, otherwise referred to as embalming. It is interesting to note that it took at around seventy days for the ancient Egyptians to convert a dead body to a mummy (Brier). The procedure of mummy production was as below: 1. Washing and thorough cleaning of the body only using water from river Nile. We will write a custom essay sample on The Mummification Process and Its Meaning to Ancient Egypt or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 2. Removal of the internal organs considering that they normally bear a lot of water. This means that they had to be removed before that particular body was embalmed. a. The brain had to be taken out but through the nose before being discarded away. The belief the ancient Egyptians held on was that the brain was not of much help as it just stuffing for the head. b. The heart was preserved and so left within the body. According to their belief, the heart was one significant body organ that they could not dare throw away. Their major argument was that the body besides controlling ones thoughts, it also controlled ones emotions, and generally it served as the place where the memories were stored, hence being termed as quite an imperative body part. . There other parts that taken out separately before being embalmed. They are the intestines, liver, stomach and the lungs. The four different parts had to be placed in a four different containers that were referred to as canopic jars. These given canopic jars were then placed beside the mummy when it was afterwards placed in a tomb. The rest of the organs were just thrown away. 3. At this point the body coul d be within a period of approximately forty days covered in a type of salt known as natron. It is worth noting that these were the days required in order for the body to dry out. 4. The body had to be stuffed using the incense. In actual fact frankincense and myrrh were the ones commonly used. To ensure that the body could in no way absorb water, it had to be smeared with resin. 5. The final stage covering of the mummy with amulets and wrapping it using strips of linen. Linen happens to be a cloth material that is normally made from flax. Apparently it is comparable to cotton. Amulets are just some curved figures that are alleged to posses some magical power. One imperative amulet was the scarab beetle. This one was usually over the heart to guarantee maximum protection. Meaning mummification to the ancient Egyptians The answer to this issue is quite challenging though it was apparently that the entire process had something to with religion. Ancient Egyptians strongly believed in an afterlife. They alleged that the Afterlife was a perfect version of a different life along the River Nile, which had a lot of water, fruit trees, some animals to hunt and mostly crops. If one was rich and did not opt to farm, they had to ascertain that there were plenty of some tiny statues that were referred to as Ushabtis. These had to be placed on the tomb. Ushabtis were structured in a way that they small, carved, mummy-like figurine that had a spell along with it, meant to ensure that it will do any hard work with regard to the entombed person(Lichtenberg). Besides the ushabtis, some other various items were occasionally included in the tomb, along with the mummy, the coffin and then the four canopic jars. These day to day items normally included cloths, furniture, some cooking equipment and sometimes food. If the particular mummified person was rich, most of these additional items could be made of gold, though some other precious riches could also be included in the tomb as well. A perfect example is the famous Pharaoh King Tutankhamun’s tomb, that included not even one but three elaborately decorated coffins, a well designed shrine meant to hold the canopic jars, a separate couch made of gold, a golden throne and some other numerous pieces of finel crafted jewelry(Bean). Works Cited Bean, Joseph W. Mummification: Down at the End of Bondage Street (SMTech Educational) [Illustrated]. The Nazca Plains Corporation , 2005. Brier, Bob. Egyptian Mummies: Unraveling the Secrets of an Ancient Art. Harper Perennial , 1996. Lichtenberg, Francoise Dunand Roger. Mummies and Death in Egypt. Cornell University Press; 1 edition , 2006.