An Overview of Mummification in Ancient Egypt

The people in ancient Egypt believed that preserving the dead body by the process of mummification was important to keep the soul alive - without a mummified dead body the soul became frantic eternally.

The ancient Egyptian mystic writings, The Book of the Dead, describes a great deal of mummification. Many of the individuals of the ancient Egypt followed this script, therefore mummification was essential when an individual deceased to go on to the new world. This article will tell you some things that are interesting about mummification. Today we know that mummification was crucial for the individuals of ancient Egypt. Also, cats were mummified when they died.

Maintaining dead people, corpse was required and there was arranged a necessary ceremony for the dead in the world of ancient Egypt. If the body was not held for future use, then the “Ka" would not can to come back and help the dead people. If the body had taken usual procedure and putrefied, it would become unrecognizable, therefore the "reception of the life powers" would starve and the afterlife would be in danger of the individual who died. Due to this thing the individuals of ancient Egypt worked with mummification process for the purpose of prevent the dead body from rotting.

Many individuals think mummification is solely a mechanical method in order to fill the corpse, the truth is that it was a ritual process too. The people of ancient Egypt were constantly looking into amusing Osiris, who was the first mummy gods in Egypt thousands of years ago. The “Hery Seshta” was the man who was responsible of carrying out the mummification; he is the individual who became the part of Anubis , the jackal god. The assistant of the mummification ceremony is the “Hetemw Netjer", the assistant embalmer priest. The person who was reading the mysterious words during the mummification was identified as the “Hery Heb.” The individual who did the actual removal of the body's organs together with covering for wound of the corpse was called the "Wetyw", the embalmer.

After somebody passed away, he would be moved to the location of washing and cleansing. This place is where an individual would be rinsed in some kind of sodium carbonate. When this was done, a person would be taken to the “Per Nefer” which means "the house of loveliness", this is where the mummification would be completed. The internal organs of the deceased person were moved out, dehydrated, rinsed and then bandaged. The organs of body were put in pots where they would be put with the body. The ancient Egyptians would adorn the containers with the “four sons of Horus.” "Hapy" is the ancient Egyptian god that had a baboon head and he took care of the lungs, "Imety" sheltered the liver and he had the human head, "Duamutef" , the god with jackal head protected the belly and "Qebehsenuff" who had a falcon head that sheltered the bowels.

Lastly, the body was set for almost six weeks to dry out. After the drying time the people of ancient Egypt immersed body with perfumed fluids. Also, some false eyes might have been inserted. The mummy was ready to jump to the other world.

There are today some fascinating museums which have the wonderful exhibitions of mummies. The most popular museums are the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin, Egyptian Museum in Cairo and certainly, the British Museum in London.

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