The Egyptian Process Of Mummification

In the Egyptian religion, there is belief in an afterlife. The Egyptians believe that another life continued after one has died. Because their beliefs were true, the time of Ancient Egyptians developed rituals regarding the death and burial of a person. These tasks would prepare the deceased soul to reach the good place and ensure a good afterlife. The afterlife to the Egyptian was a place of bliss, delight, and peace. Death occupied the Egyptians they believed that after death they would pass through the dark and terrifying place called the underworld. Before a person's soul can rest he or she would prepare as a mortal, be mummified, and take the journey of tests before passing through the underworld into the afterlife.

Ancient Egyptian embalming was a very sacred process performed by experienced embalmers. Ancient Egyptians used to bury the deceased underground, but because of that they decayed faster in a coffin when they aren’t exposed to the hot sand of the desert. That is how they developed the process of embalming to preserve the bodies.

Religion was not a monolithic institution, it consisted of a large variety of different beliefs and practices, all of which were linked by the common focus on the interaction between the Egyptian people and the divine realm, as the gods of this realm linked the Egyptian understanding of the world. As the Ancient Egyptian Religion was an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. Polytheism the belief of multiple deities usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses along with their own mythologies and rituals was an essential aspect of ancient Egyptian religion. As the Ancient Egyptian religion included a large and diverse pantheon of gods and goddesses, and around these deities arose a rich mythology that helped explain the

Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on religion. Their belief in the rebirth after death became their driving force behind their funeral practices. Death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than an end to life, and that eternal life could be ensured by means of worship to the gods, preservation of the physical form thru mummification, substantial ceremonies and detailed burial policies and procedures. Even though many today have varying views of an afterlife, many of the funerary practices that originated in Egypt can be seen in present day funeral services.

Every individual experiences the act of death, and most persons experience the death of someone they know of. Whether family, kin, or someone infamous, the living deal with the process of dying. Anthropology seeks to understand the universal process of death ritual and how different cultures deal with death differently. An anthropologist can extract social values of a given culture, past or present, from how death ceremony is practiced. Such values could be regarding political hierarchy or an individual’s status in a society, and about a culture’s spiritual or religious faith. By exploring death ceremony in ancient Egypt, contemporary Hindu death practice in India, and current North American funerary rites, it can be illustrated that

The Ancient Egyptians everyday lives really showed through in their beliefs and religion. They were polytheistic and believed in over 2,000 gods including Re, the sun god, Osiris, the god of death, and Isis, the goddess of maternity who also resembled the ideal mother and wife. To them, their pharaohs were not just pharaohs, they were the actual gods themselves. They also believed in the afterlife. When they died it was really just a continuation of their regular life. The god Anubis weighed their souls, if it was lighter than a feather, they were free to pass into the afterlife, any heavier and the Devourer of Souls would eat it. The Egyptians would also mummify their pharaohs to preserve their bodies for the afterlife. The process was very

Mummification is an ancient egyptian burial rite that is centered around preparing the soul of the deceased for the afterlife. There are multiple steps involved in the process of mummification and several objects with different functions used to perform this burial rite. Mummification is centered around the thought that death was merely physical and your soul continued living, with the ability to take distinct action, in the afterlife. Everyone desired to be mummified, however the extent of the mummification depended on the wealth of the family involved. Mummification was also generally not a rite reserved for criminals and lawbreakers since the idea behind mummification is for the deceased to have an easier afterlife.

Religion plays enormous role in the past and the present. It had shaped our laws, social norms, and purpose. Religion gives its people hope and understanding of many things that are unknown and a mystery. It provides security to its people. Religion has many roles which branch off due to the many different religions observed in the world. In ancient Egyptian literature, deities were important and mention a lot. The Egyptians worshiped and followed many gods and other sacred beings, which had diverse roles in its society. The functions of Egyptian deities provided understanding of the mysteries of world, accountability of life events, and control in society.

Imagine you’re an archeologist exploring Egypt and you find an old tomb, one that has not been ransacked. Strangely, the mummy is a pharaoh in only a rich man’s tomb and it turns out this ruler died young. The mummy is King Tutankhamun and he was killed by Aye, his chief advisor. Aye killed King Tut for power over Ancient Egypt. Evidence shows that the pharaoh had many injuries before his death.

In this tradition, people would be mummified after death. Once this threshold had been crossed, a person's spirit or ba could be manifested in many places at once. After judgment, which could be cheated with magic, a person's ba could travel with Ra or rest with Osiris in the underworld (Egyptian 119). There were many different dangers to the dead and having a complete body with which to return to for rest was very important for the Egyptians. Human remains were not the objects of reverence and worship as Christian saints are these days.

When reading these passages, I couldn’t help, but notice the important role that food played in both Egyptian and Sumerian cultures. The importance of food is very evident in the second chapter “Egyptian Book of the Dead”. In “Egyptian Book of the dead” It lays out the beliefs of the Egyptian’s by going into depth with their religious texts. My main question that I have come across when I was going through these readings was why do the Egyptian’s mix religion with food. Did they mix religion and food because they held both of these entities in such a high regard?

Once again the main priority of getting accepted into the afterlife resulted in the bettering of the mummification process. To conclude, the creation of different types of amulets, tombs and the preparation of a body for burial, helped the Egyptians progress their everyday aspects of life, develop on many of their infrastructures and art due to their top priority of getting into the afterlife.

Mummification was the Egyptians way of preserving the body for after life while it was awaiting the god Osiris for judgement. The process itself is very long and difficult. The brain which was less important was removed by the priest with a hook from the nose in several pieces and them thrown out. The large organs were then removed and the body cavities were packed with rock salt called natron to help to rid the body of moisture along with placing the body in the sun. The heart was the only organ left in the body because it was the body’s spirit or Ka. Organs like the intestines, stomach, liver and lungs were then placed in canopic jars

In ancient Egypt, scarabs (a sacred large dung beetle from the Mediterranean area) first appeared in the late Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 BCE) and were used for the living, as a sign of good luck. Then when they evolved from the so-called button seals scarabs, they remained rare until Middle Kingdom times (1938–c. 1630 BCE). This was because they were now being associated with the afterlife and death. Some were used simply as ornaments and decoration, while others were purely sacred in purpose, such as the large basalt “heart scarabs” of the New Kingdom (1539–1075 BCE). Later they were also placed in the bandages of mummies and were symbolically identified with the heart of the deceased. (Lace, William. Mummification and Death Rituals of Ancient

The Egyptian Book of the Dead was used primarily from the establishment of the New Kingdom in 1550 BCE to 50 BCE. It consisted of the collection of texts and spells designed to assist the deceased in their journey to the next world. The book of the dead was part of a custom of memorial texts that consisted of the past Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts that were decorated on objects. Spells were drained from the past works and other Egyptian history courting to Third Intermediate Period (Budge, 2012:21).