EGYPTIAN MUMMIFICATION

Do Now Take out your Lesson 4.2 Fact-Finders and

let’s discuss the following:

1. Why did Egyptians preserve the bodies of the dead?

2. What items were placed in the tomb with a royal mummy?

3. What was the process of the “Weighing of the Heart?”

The Ba and the Ka The ancient Egyptians believed that

everyone had a soul.

They called the soul by two names—the Ba and the Ka.

After you died, the ancient Egyptians believed that the Ba returned during the day to live with the family.

The Ba

The Ba and the Ka The Ka flew off to live in the afterlife, which they

believed was a very nice place.

At night, both the Ba and the Ka flew home to sleep in the body in its tomb.

If something happened to your preserved body, the Ba and Ka would get lost, and you would disappear.

The best way they knew how to preserve a body was to mummify it.

The Ka

Mummy Makers As the ancient Egyptians learned more about

medicine, they learned how to mummify a body without setting it out in the heat of the desert, where wild animals might destroy it.

The pharaohs, and those who could afford it, soon had the ability to hire professional mummy makers. It was expensive, and mummy makers charged a lot of money, but those who could afford it were glad to pay the tab. They wanted to look their best in the afterlife. The process of getting a body ready for burial took about 70 days.

Ceremony The first step of a professional

mummification was the ceremony. Four priests, one dressed as the jackal-or dog-headed god, Anubis, removed the inner organs of the body and placed them in canopic jars.

Ceremony Canopic jars were used to store organs.

Each jar was protected by one of the four sons of the god Horus and the lid of each jar was in the shape of one of the four sons’ heads.

These jars were placed in a special chest, and stored in the tomb, next to the body.

Canopic Jars

Ceremony They removed the brain through the

nose and threw it away. The heart was left in the body.

Natron They packed the body with natron, which

is a type of salt and it stops decay. Linen cloth and natron were used as packing to replace the organs.

40 Days The body was covered with natron and

placed on a tilted slab. The natron drained the body of all fluids. That process took about 40 days.

Decorate Good luck charms, like ankhs, were tucked into

the 20 layers of cloth that were wrapped around the body.

An ankh was the ancient Egyptians’ symbol meaning “life.”

If you were wealthy, good luck charms were

made of precious jewels, ivory, and semi-precious stones.

Jewelry was used to decorate the body as well.

Symbols

Mask The face was covered with a specially

created mask, designed to look like the face of the dead person.

The ancient Egyptians believed the mask helped Ba and Ka souls to recognize their person when they flew home at night, back to the body.

Mask

Coffin After 70 days, the mummy was placed in

a coffin or a series of coffins if the person was wealthy enough to afford more than one coffin.

They were covered with written prayers to gods, and poems of praise, and with colorful illustrations.

Coffin

Procession The first night of death, family and

friends would bring the possessions the deceased had collected, and walk with the body and the possessions to its final resting place, the tomb.

Family and/or professional mourners, wearing blue clothes, would wail and throw ash on themselves while the priests said prayers.

Book of the Dead At the tomb itself, the priests would

gather and read from the Book of the Dead. This was not actually a book. It was a collection of papyrus scripts full of spells and magic incantations to ensure safe passage to the afterworld.

Locking the Door Finally, the mummy was placed in the

tomb, and the door into the tomb was locked. Tomb robbers, of course, ignored this rule, as did priests if they felt the mummy of a pharaoh was in danger of being stolen or damaged.

Moving the Mummy After everyone was gone, the priests

might enter the tomb and move the body to a more secretive place. The pharaoh needed his mummified body so that his Ba and Ka could return at night.

Wrap Up Name some things that you observed or

learned during the lesson.