Understanding Mummification: Ancient Egypt's Afterlife Ritual

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The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife where the body will still be needed there, they will perceive and embalm their deceased in order to have an afterlife, the corpse of the person will be repossessed and the process is called mummification. Jeremiah (2012) stated, it is believed that the body of the deceased has to be taken care in order to prevent the body from decaying. Mummification is a process to preserve the flesh and skin of a corpse and this process takes seventy days to be done. The Egyptians use large cloth which is linen to cover the corpse in order to protect the body from rotting. According to Dawson (1927), it appears that in the Canary Islands mummification was mainly done for chiefs and the wealthier classes. The poor were buried either in caves or in the earth without artificial preservation since they could not afford to pay the service, offered by embalmers. There are three major steps in mummification which are, evisceration followed by, desiccation and the final step are wrapping the mummy. The first step in mummification is to eviscerate. Evisceration is generally the removal of the organs that the Egyptians want to preserve (Mohan, 2013). In the context of mummification, the ancient Egyptians used special processes to remove all the organs from the body. Special …show more content…

What is desiccation? Desiccation is an extreme state of dryness. Dryness is when there is lack of moisture. This step is to remove all the moisture in the body. This is to make the body lasts longer and does not decay easily. According to Noble 1969, natron salt is used in this desiccation step. Natron salt consist of a mixture of sodium compounds. Thus, it has high drying properties. The whole body will be covered with natron salt. Packets of natron salt will also be placed inside the body. 35 to 40 days passed by to complete this drying step (O’Neill, 2015). The natron salt does not only remove moisture, it also dissolves body

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