Among the most vital aspects of religious
expression in Ancient Egypt was the Egyptian attitude toward death. But
our understanding of the Egyptian afterlife is limited by a number of factors.
For example, most of the "real" Ancient Egyptians were peasants,
and these peasants were poor and illiterate as were most town-dwellers (craftsmen
and merchants) as well. The many tombs and funerary texts which survive
from Ancient Egypt give us a fairly good idea as to the beliefs and attitudes
of those Egyptians who could afford to build elaborate tombs, and who were
either literate themselves, or wealthy enough to be able to employ those
who were. However, we today must be very careful in generalizing from this
level of society to society as a whole. Certainly the poor and the illiterate
had some expectation of an afterlife, for village and town cemeteries have
been excavated to reveal shallow graves into which were placed a few, rude
funerary objects and containers of food. But precisely what the "average"
Ancient Egyptian believed about what would happen to him or her after death
we do not know, for the "average Egyptian" was an illiterate peasant.
What we know about the Ancient Egyptian cult of the dead is therefore primarily
dependent upon the belief structure of the upper classes of Ancient Egypt,
as reflected in their tombs and texts. Even here, however, we must accept
limits to our comprehension, for what anyone believed about what would happen
to him or her after death varied enormously according to time and place
(as one might expect when discussing a period of time more than three thousand
years long). However, very early on in their history the Egyptians developed
a relatively attractive and benign understanding concerning the nature of
life and death an understanding which met their emotional and psychological
needs so effectively that they encountered no better and more satisfying
explanation of death until the rise of Christianity and Islam. One can therefore
identify certain aspects of this Egyptian concept of the afterlife which
were common to all periods of pharaonic history; and this, in turn, makes
it possible for modern scholars to construct a paradigmatic Egyptian "cult
of the dead" which helps us to understand an extremely varied and complex
set of beliefs.
If there is anything which illustrates a decisive difference between Ancient Egyptian culture and other ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian worlds, it is the astonishingly optimistic view with which the Egyptians regarded death. This is not to say that the Egyptians did not fear what we call death, for they certainly did, and they devoted vast energy and expense to confronting and overcoming it. But the difference between the Egyptian attitude toward death and that of, say, the ancient Mesopotamians or the ancient Greeks becomes obvious once one examines such texts as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Odyssey. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, death is regarded as something to be dreaded and feared. Indeed, life itself is regarded equivocally, as something short, nasty, and brutish; but death is more terrible yet. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sails west out of the Pillars of Heracles and into the Atlantic Ocean, eventually reaching a place which gives him access to Hades. He descends into Hell and after many adventures encounters a line of shades spirits of the dead among whom are several of his former comrades who died fighting at Troy. Foremost among these Greek heroes is Achilles, the warrior to whom, when he was young, the gods had offered a choice between a short but glorious life and a long, happy, but boring one. Achilles, of course, had chosen glory, and with it, an early death. Now he stands with his fallen fellows, simply one among thousands of forlorn shadows, all of them leveled to a common rank of desolate equality by the power of death. He sees Odysseus, and as the two greet one another, Achilles laments his earlier choice: death, he says, is horrible beyond human understanding, and had he to do it over again, he would unhesitatingly choose a long life over fleeting glory.
Compare these attitudes towards death with the Egyptian expectation that, if all goes well, one lives forever: that death is simply a transition, a passage from one phase of life to another. Moreover, the "life" which begins at the moment of death is by no means something horrifying. Indeed, it was often conceived of as an idealized, perfect vision of life as the Egyptians already knew it: the "Fields of the Blessed", a perfected vision of the Nile Valley presided over by the beneficent god Osiris. Here the soil is always fruitful and the harvests are always bountiful. One implication of this vision of eternity is not only that the Egyptians tempered their fear of death with hopeful optimism, but that they also viewed life in the Nile Valley with a unusually positive eye. For the Egyptians, life was not short, nasty, and brutish; it was (at least for many) long, bountiful, and pleasant. Thus in their view of eternity they looked forward to a life after death which would be very much like life itself. If their expectation of the afterlife was a positive one, it is because they held a generally positive attitude toward life as they knew it.
However, one should not conclude from this that the Egyptians were "obsessed" with death or, at least, obsessed with it to any greater extent than were any other ancient people. The common misconception that the Egyptians were driven by an obsession with death is principally due to the fact that the preservative qualities of the deserts of Egypt have saved for us so many more of their works of architecture and writing than have survived elsewhere. Moreover, since the Egyptians tended to reserve the deserts for use as cemeteries (towns nor temples were rarely built in the desert, nor was good, agricultural land wasted as burial ground), what survives from the ancient period tends to give us a somewhat distorted view of pharaonic civilization itself a view which almost inevitably over-emphasizes funereal aspects. In fact, a perusal of, for example, Greek literature and philosophy makes it plain that the Greeks and the Romans were no less (and no more) obsessed with the question of death than were the ancient Egyptians. It is true that well-to-do Egyptians devoted a considerable proportion of their wealth to preparing tombs and other paraphernalia related to death; but so too did the well- to-do of Sumeria, of Babylonia, of Greece, and of Rome. Did the average Egyptian "out-prepare" his Mesopotamian or Hellenic counterpart? More to the point, did he or she devote a greater proportion of his or her wealth and income to preparation for death? The question is difficult to answer, particularly as it is easy to be misled by the chance survival of so many more complete tombs in Egypt into believing that there was something weirdly unique about Ancient Egypt's concern with the afterlife. However, if one carefully compares Egyptian tombs with tombs that have survived from other equally wealthy societies the tombs of the Etruscans in Italy, for example it becomes very difficult to see the Egyptians as being uniquely obsessed. Even societies like those of Greece and Rome which looked forward to no real afterlife at all (certainly not to one which was liable to be enjoyed in any way) devoted substantial resources to the construction of elaborate, impressive, and very expensive family tombs (such as those which still stand along the Appian Way outside of Rome). Consequently, one must be careful in comparing the Egyptian cult of the dead with that of any other early society. Certainly, preparation for an afterlife played an important role in the life of every well-to-do Egyptian. But it is unlikely that the extent to which the Egyptian devoted his or her life to preparation for death was any greater than it was for the Babylonian, Greek, or Roman.
In order to understand the Egyptian conception of death and the afterlife, one must understand how the Egyptians conceived of life itself. The Egyptians believed that each human entity consists of several distinct elements. Some of these elements are physical, material objects; others are metaphysical in character, spirits and ethereal forces. Precisely how many of these elements there are as well as their exact identities varied from time-to-time and place-to-place.
At the highest level of Ancient Egyptian theological speculation that is, within the cosmologies of the various great temple cults the universe itself was regarded as consisting of two over-arching identities, "form" and "formlessness." The former is Order. Order includes not only the physical reality of the environment that surrounds us, but life itself, which is presided over by those creative, indeed "organizing" forces that is, the gods that came into being at the moment of creation. But it was from "formlessness" that order and structure emerged, and the Egyptian conceived of "formlessness" as Chaos, the absence of order and structure. "Formlessness", however, must not be confused with a state of nothingness, for "formlessness" is a reality filled with immensely powerful forces and currents constantly shifting and moving. Usually, these forces no specific structure or shape. But every now and then, for some mysterious reason, the moving forces of Chaos throw out something that is ordered and structured. Indeed, "creation," to the Egyptians, meant the coming into being of Order "form" out of Chaos "formlessness." The ultimate irony is that it is the forces of Chaos itself that beget creation. However, these same forces continue to surround that which has been created the physical world and all life within it and threaten it with the destruction.
Life is part of "form"; death real death, not simply the cessation of the body's ability to function, but the complete erasure of a person's physical and spiritual reality is part of "formlessness." The life of any individual begins as a small, private act of creation: a living person comes into being out of Chaos, complete with both physical and spiritual elements. Each of these elements has a unique, separate identity and character; each can, within limits, thrive on its own apart from the others; but each is at the same time one component of a larger whole. That larger whole is an individual person. Thus in the Egyptian conception, each person consists of several different elements. Each of these elements is essential to the existence of the whole if any one is lacking, the individual ceases to exist.
The most important elements are as follows.
The Physical Body is simply a lump of flesh. In the Egyptian conception it has no ability to function on its own: to act, it must be energized, and that only happens when the other essential elements of the individual, his or her spirits, occupy the Body. When one is born and throughout the first stage of one's personal existence, these spirits remain, for the most, part within the Body. However, the Body ages and decays and eventually reaches a point where it can no longer function. At that point the point which we call "death"a person's spirits separate from his or her Body and begin to pursue separate existences. In this second stage of existence life continues as long as existence itself continues. Only if any of the spirits or if the physical Body should disappear or be irretrievably damaged does true death occur, for "true death" is the rendering of something which has form and shape and identity into formlessness. In such a case, "non-existence" replaces "existence". The eternal survival of the physical body is critical to maintaining a person's existence because the Body into which one is bomspecifically, the physical appearance, the shape, and the form of the Body is an essential element of every being. This does not mean that the Egyptians ever conceived of "dead" bodies getting up and walking again; with all due respect to Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., and Erik von Daniken's idea that the pyramids were grand resuscitation chambers for mummies, the idea of the physical resurrection of the flesh was not a part of Egyptian conceptions of life and death. The Body, having decayed, could never be renewed. The problem was therefore not how to revive it but simply how to ensure that it survives forever and retains a form that is recognizably the shape of the person in question. One's physical appearance must endure if one's spirits are to endure, and the best way to maintain that appearance is to preserve one's physical Body.
The Ka is something of a spiritual
engine. It appears at the moment of birth, and its energy is what causes
the Body to function and move during the first stage of existence. What
sustains the Ka and gives it the power to charge up the Body is the energy
which it itself consumes, and which it must consume in order to remain in
existence. It derives this energy from food and drink; indeed, when the
Body consumes food and drink, it absorbs the physical form of these so as
to permit the Ka to consume their essence. This essence keeps the Ka alive
and gives it the power to function. Thus when a person eats and drinks,
it is really that person's Ka which is eating and drinking. During the first
stage of existence, when the physical body is capable of functioning, the
Ka remains for the most part within the Body. However, it has the ability
to leave the Body, although it tends to do so only under special circumstances,
such as when some-one sleeps. Thus when a person dreams about traveling
somewhere, he or she is in fact undertaking a journey, for the Ka has separated
from the Body and flown off on its own. However, the Ka always returns,
for not only does it require more sustenance but it needs shelter from the
physical dangers of nature. Thus when the Body seeks shelter from storms
or excessive heat and cold or when it looks for pleasure in the form of
comfortable furniture, good food, and fine beer it is actually the person's
Ka which motivates the action. But when the Body "dies", the Ka
is forced to separate from it. How-ever, it cannot travel far: it is linked
to it in a spiritual sense and must remain here in close proximity. Meanwhile
its need for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and pleasure does not lessen:
it must continue to receive these or it will slowly disintegrate and slide
into "non-existence". (In art the Ka often is depicted as a blackened
reverse image of a person with its arms upraised.)
The Ba is another spirit that comes into existence at birth. Like the Ka, it spends the first stage of its life mostly within the Body. It may be conceived of as the fount of personality and intellect: it is as if it is the Ka which makes the body talk but the Ba which causes the words to make sense. When the Body ceases to function, the Ba must separate from it. Unlike the Ka, however, its spiritual link to the inert Body is tenuous, for it leaves and moves on to pursue a second stage of "existence" on its own. It can, however, fly back-and-forth between heaven and earth, returning to both the Ka and the Body to assure itself of their condition. (For this reason, the Ba was regularly depicted in Egyptian art as a bird with a human head. However, it also was depicted with the normal features and appearance of the deceased.) Precisely where the Ba spends its own version of eternity varied in the Egyptian conception, but there was no doubt that it had to return regularly to the Ka and the Body, perhaps serving as a continuous spiritual link between them and the third of a person's major spirits, the Akh. Without a link here on this earth, therefore, the Ba cannot survive.
The most mysterious of a person's spirits is his or her Akh, a entity which either comes into being only at the moment when the body ceases to function (that is, at what we call "death") or lies dominant throughout the first stage of "existence", waking up only at physical death. Regardless, at that moment it separates from the body and this earth, never to return. One conception of its destination is that it will rise up to the boat of the sun and journey with it throughout eternity. Another, more common version of its goal is elaborately described in tomb-art and papyrus texts of the New Kingdom Period and later: it moves off in search of the "Land of the Reeds", a heavenly version of the Nile Valley where it will meet with the spirits of deceased family members and spend eternity among fields and orchards which are ever fruitful. But to reach the "Land of the Reeds" the Akh must overcome all sorts of trials and obstacles posed by various gods and demons many of them emanations of the dread, dire, unknowable forces of Chaos. At the end the Akh will arrive before the Lord of the "Land of the Reeds", Osiris, but before entering the sought-after realm it must undergo a final trial. The Akh's deeds (meaning what the person did while he or she was alive) are weighed on a balance-scale against Ma'at, the goddess of "order" and "existence" (personified as a women with a feather as a crown, or simply shown as a feather). The weighing is presided over by the god Thoth, who is aided by Anubis. At its conclusion Thoth leads the Akh forward to a table at which sits, on one side, Osiris, and on the other side a fierce dog-like demon called 'Amm (male) or 'Ammit (female). If the Akh has balanced the scales properly, Thoth will present it to Osiris; if not, the Akh is given over to 'Amm to be consumed and destroyed. If all goes well, then, Osiris will welcome the Akh to his realm. (The scene of the "weighing of the Soul" is one of the common and impressive scenes in tomb-painting of the New Kingdom and later, end the idealization of a Nile-like "Land of the Reeds" is almost as prevalent. One of the best examples of the later is the scene which dominates one end of the tomb of Sennedjem at Deir al-Madina in Luxor.)
A person's Name is as essential a component of an individual person as the Body, the Ka, the Ba, and the Akh. The name must survive for ever that is, it must continue to be known, both on this earth, in the heavens among the gods, and in the realm of Osiris is the other elements of the individual are to attain their own versions of immortality.
One can add other elements to the five described above for example, a person's shadow, which was often judged to be a separate, unique physical element. Moreover, one should note that the above categories do not constitute rigid definitions: the Ba and the Akh, for example, were often mixed up as to which went where and did what after death. Furthermore, we know so little of what the Ancient Egyptians believed about the afterlife in the Old Kingdom Period and earlier that it has led to all sorts of essentially undocumented speculation. It has been argued, for example, that throughout much of the Old Kingdom the "common person" did not believe that he or she had a Ka, Ba, or Akh. Instead, he believed that only the king possessed these spirits and that king subsumed within his own soul his people's hope for an afterlife: if he made it, so too did they. This idea has been put forward to explain why Egyptians labored so willingly on the pyramid complexes, and it has also been tied up with a theory that in the Middle Kingdom period there was a "democratization" of beliefs about the afterlife, since it is only in this era that we begin to find texts and inscriptions in non-royal tombs (the so-called "Coffin Texts" of the Middle Kingdom) which speak of such entities as the Ka, Ba, and Akh as "personal" spirits. However, the oldest "royal" texts which speak of these matters in any detail are no earlier than the "Pyramid Texts" of the late Vth. Dynasty pyramid of Unas at Saqqara; and by this time there were dozens of nobles' tombs being produced (at Saqqara, Giza, Abusir, and elsewhere) filled with reliefs which make it plain that the nobility certainly were concerned about caring for their Ka's. If few texts of this period talk about Ba's and Akh's, possibly it is because the belief in these elements of the afterlife did not develop until the later Old Kingdom. Besides, there is so little good documentation about the belief structure that underlay the cult of the dead in the Old Kingdom that almost anything said about this period is speculation. In any case, one can speak with confidence about a belief structure focused on physical and spiritual elements called the Body, the Ka, the Ba, the Akh, and the Name as being the heart of the Egyptian cult of the dead from the Middle Kingdom Period on. The basic purpose of the cult was predicated on the belief that each of these elements had to survive in the second stage of "existence" that began at the moment of physical death. The cult was dedicated to preparations during the first stage of one's "existence" so as to ensure that each element of oneself would have as good a chance as possible to "make it" in the second stage of "existence.".
Most of this preparation was focused on the building of a tomb and seeing to it that it was supplied with everything necessary for the eternal survival of the Body, Ka, Ba, Akh, and Name. Most Egyptian "tombs" were actually two structures which might or might not be physically separate from one another. However, even if separate they would be located so as to be in close proximity with one another. One part of the tomb may be properly termed the "Burial Chamber". It was built as a receptacle for the sarcophagus and coffin of the deceased. Its purpose was to serve as a place where the embalmed body could be secreted away from danger, thus assuring its eternal survival. The location of the burial chamber was usually such that once the coffin was placed within, its entry-passage could be blocked and obscured once the body was inside, there would be no reason for any "living" person (that is, anyone still in the first stage of his or her life) to enter the burial chamber. Of course, the Ka and Ba of the deceased needed to visit the body and assure themselves of its condition, But these elements were spirits and could move through stone with ease. Therefore all that they required was the outline of a doorway carved in rock or stone that would give them a hint as to the location of the burial chamber. Such a "false doorway" was always included within the decoration of the second part of the tomb, the "Tomb Chapel". The chapel's location, unlike that of the burial chamber, was never hidden. It was not a public building but was nonetheless intended to be open so that priests serving the cult of the deceased as well as members of the deceased's family could go inside They would bring with them offerings of real food and real drink, for the chapel was quite literally the "house of the Ka": it is where the Ka of the deceased found shelter and sustenance. These offerings would be placed on an offertory which usually stood at the foot of an elaborate false doorway, for when its peace was being disturbed by the "living", the Ka would take refuge by slipping out of the chapel through the false doorway and to behind or down below in the burial chamber until the visitor or visitors had parted. (Some tom chapels were also provided with special hidden rooms called "serdabs" for the use of the Ka at such times,) The Ka would then return to the chapel and consume the essence of what had been left behind. (Later, the priests returned and cleared away the remains of the spiritually-consumed items; these then became part of their meal.)
Tombs (consisting of chapel and burial chamber both) were usually located together with other tombs in specific cemeteries. The cemeteries were served by priests who would see that daily offerings of food and drink were brought to each of the tombs within their charge, and by guards who would prevent tomb-robbers from attempting to locate and enter the hidden burial chambers. Burial chambers were often used places of secure storage for furniture and jewelry as well as jars of beer and boxes of food for the Ka's use. Unfortunately, there was always a very real danger that tomb-robbers, aware of the potential value of objects which might be found in a burial chamber, might try to break in. Worse, tomb-robbers were aware that a fortune in small, easily-portable jewelry was often placed on and within the wrappings of the embalmed body: everyone was acutely aware of the fact that many bodies of past generations had been torn to shreds by tomb-robbers. In addition, burial chambers were often used to store papyrus rolls containing incantations and spells which could be employed by the Akh as it encountered its many trials en route to the realm of Osiris. Indeed, without the help of these texts there was a very real possibility that the Akha rather stupid spirit as spirits go would not make it on through. Should the texts be stolen or damaged, the consequences would be dire indeed. (These texts, which date from the New Kingdom Period and after, are often called "Books of the Dead".)
An Egyptian built his or her tomb in a cemetery partly because he or she hoped that if a sufficient payment were made often a grant of land the income of which was to go in perpetuity towards the upkeep of the tomb and the carrying out of the necessary rites of offering the cemetery as an institution would act to ensure his or her spirits a safe, secure, and pleasant afterlife. But Egyptians were intelligent enough to realize that there was no eternal prophylactic against tomb-robbing, just as there was no way to guarantee that a cemetery would still be a functioning institution decades after their death: what would happen should the body be destroyed, or grave objects stolen? What would happen if there remained no one to bring the Ka the offerings essential to its survival? This is where funerary art came to the rescue, for it was designed to protect against such eventualities. From the New Kingdom Period on, the walls of burial chambers were often covered with scenes illustrating scenes drawn from the texts which describe the encounters which the Akh might expect: these would survive even if the texts themselves were stolen. In case something should happen to the body, Egyptians filled their tombs with two- and three-dimensional representations of themselves (reliefs and sculptures) in the hope that even in the body's absence, these would serve to preserve a person's physical appearance and thus ensure the continued existence of his or her spirits. In addition, the walls of the tomb chamber (from the Old Kingdom on) were covered with scenes depicting the production of all of the items food, drink, furniture, servants that a well-to-do Ka would require in order to live (and to live well) forever. Thus even if the real items were stolen by tomb robbers or no longer brought as offerings, the reliefs would survive forever, permitting the Ka to make use of the relief-borne essence of the objects. Thus the tomb supplied the Ka with a home and the Ba with a place on earth. It provided the Akh with the aid and advice it required on its perilous journey; the Body with a safe receptacle; and the Ka with food, drink, and furniture in the form of painted and carved representations. In the unfortunate circumstance of the body's destruction, statues and reliefs depicting the deceased would survive in the tomb and preserve his/her physical appearance forever. In addition, most tombs were supplied with miniature mummiform figurines of stone, ceramic, or wood figurines which could be called upon by the Ka, Ba, or Akh to spring to life and carry out some necessary or onerous task. These figures (called "ushabtis", or "shawabtis") were usually placed in boxes in the burial chamber together with miniature tools and utensils: Tutankhamun's tomb contains hundreds of Ushabtis and hundreds more of their tools. Finally, the walls of the tomb were covered with repetitions of the name of the deceased, ensuring that that name would live throughout eternity. (Tombs often featured stelastone slabs outside in positions where they would be seen by passers- by. These stela often requested those chance visitors to repeat the name of the deceased, a certain means of ensuring immortality.)
The tomb is thus a multi-purpose pair of structure, tomb chapel and burial chamber, each doing its part to assist in the eternal survival of the Body, Ka, Ba, Akh, and Name. Tombs might be built with a chapel consisting of a superstructure built of stone blocks or bricks above ground and a burial chamber cut into the bedrock below, or they might be built with both elements cut into the rock face of a desert cliff. (The former type is today called a "mastaba", from an Arabic word describing a bench-like structural form.) Tombs might be smaller or larger according to the resources available to the builder. Some tombs (such as the VIth Dynasty tomb of Mereruka at Saqqara) feature chapels with many rooms and contain special areas for different members of the family; others are so small that the chapel and burial chamber are joined into one rock-cut tunnel, with the burial chamber separated from the open chapel by a mud-brick or stone wall. The largest tombs of all are the royal tomb complexes, but even these simply replicate the bipartite structure of a typical tomb, albeit on an impossibly grand scale. At the Giza pyramids the "burial chamber" is a room cut into the bed-rock beneath each pyramid (or in the unique case of the Great Pyramid, built up into the pyramid's superstructure), while the "tomb chapel" is the complex of temples and causeways which lies on the eastern side of each pyramid a veritable palace for the king's living Ka. (The pyramids themselves are best thought of as oversized grave-stones: huge advertisements of royal power.) At Luxor the "palaces of the kings' Ka's" are the grand mortuary temples at Deir al-Bahari, the Ramesseum, and Madinat Habu; the royal "burial chambers" are the rock-cut, elaborately decorated tunnels of the Valley of the Kings. (The Valley itself is located close enough to the cliff edge fronting on the Nile Valley proper that a close physical proximity remains between the mortuary temples and their associated tombs.)
As noted above, every tomb contained two- and three-dimensional representations of the deceased which were intended to preserve his or her physical appearance in case the body should be destroyed. However, the ideal circumstance was the preservation of the body itself, and to this end the Egyptians developed a unique art of embalming. In the pre-dynastic period the danger of physical deterioration of a corpse was off-set by the dryness of the Egyptian deserts. Bodies were buried in shallow pit graves in the desert sands and dried naturally: the skin toughened and turned into leather. However, bodies buried in simple pit graves with grave offerings were easy targets for thieves, so that from the First Dynasty on, well-to-do Egyptians were locating their burial chambers in pits cut down into the bed rock below mud-brick or stone chapels. But bodies placed in such chambers were removed from the drying qualities of the desert above: moisture entered the chambers through the permeable limestone or sandstone and attacked the bodies, gradually destroying them. To combat this, Egyptians of the Archaic Period drew the bodies of their dead into fetal positions, wrapped them in linen, and deposited them in wooden sarcophagi. In Dynasties 111 and IV they began to cut the body open and removing its perishable organs. The body was laid out flat and packs of linen were stuffed into its cavity to restore its shape. Wide strips of linen were then soaked in an adhesive and wound around the body. When the adhesive had set, the exterior was covered with a thin layer of plaster and painted to resemble the deceased. Several Old Kingdom bodies the oldest "mummies"embalmed in this fashion have survived.
The word "mummy" is neither Egyptian nor Arabic in origin. It is instead Persian, and refers to tar or pitch or petroleum. In the classical era, Persia had a monopoly over "mummia", which it derived from oil seeps and exported widely as a black, viscous matter highly valued for its medicinal properties. In the Middle Ages people began to notice that embalmed bodies in Egypt were covered with a black, viscous-like substance resembling "mummia". In fact this was the congealed residue of unguents employed in the embalming process, but this was not known. Instead, the substance and even the bodies which it covered came to be called "mummia"which is how "mummy dust" came to be regarded in the Middle Ages as a useful medicine.
It was in fact not until the end of the Old Kingdom Period that the Egyptians began to advance their embalming arts further by using a natural drying agent: patron, a salt-like substance which was acquired in a desert valley west of the Delta today called "Natron Valley" ("Wad) Natrun"). By the Middle Kingdom Period dehydration and removal of internal organs was practiced as part of the process which most people now think of as being "true" mummification. The process is described in detail by Herodotus a description undoubtedly based on the manner in which mummification was carried out in his own day, the fifth century BC. Herodotus indicates that there were three ways in the Egyptians embalmed bodies. In the simplest (and cheapest) process, a body was simply wrapped in linen and buried. No effort was undertaken to employ artificial techniques, and perhaps not surprisingly many of the best preserved mummies to survive from Ancient Egypt are of this type, particularly ones which were simply buried in the desert sands. The desert itself was the most efficient mummifier of all. In the most difficult and expensive process, the body was brought to a special "embalming house" where it was placed on its back on a large table. A specialist then used a specially hooked utensil to break into the brain cavity through the nostrils and then employed a long, delicate spoon to remove the brain. Once taken out, the brain was not preserved. The body then was fumed on its right side and an incision was made in its left side by use of a sharp stone. Through this incision the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines were removed. These were washed and dried separately, treated with hot resin, wrapped in linen, and put into jars (the four "canopic" jars) for eventually placement in the tomb. (In some periods of Egyptian history the wrapped internal organs were replaced inside the body cavity before burial. The kidneys remained in the body, and the empty thorax and abdomen were washed with palm wine and then packed with materials sand, straw, rags, vegetable fiber, whatever was available. ("Whatever" might include old pieces of paper: the Fayyum has become a treasure-trove of Greco- Roman era papyrus discovered by breaking open animal mummies: the papyrus was used as packing!) The body was then placed on a sloping board and covered with dry patron. It was left for forty days, at the end of which the body will have become complete dehydrated. Now dry, the body's stuffing was removed and the corpse mostly skin and bone was again washed. Linen soaked in resin was then placed in the cranial cavity and the body refilled with packing material. the incision in the abdomen was stitched up, while the cheeks were padded with linen and linen bails were placed in the eye-socket; sometimes artificial eyes were employed. The eyelids were closed, eyebrows were painted on, and the entire body covered with a molten resin. At this point the body was ready for wrapping (the toes and other extremities first); linen strips were used in a process presided over by a priest who inserted amulets and charms into the wrappings. The entire embalming took seventy days from the moment of death.
The process described above represents the supreme effort of the Egyptian embalmer: only the royal family and the most prominent courtiers could have afforded it. Even so, there was no guarantee that the process would work, and the various unguents and preservatives which were poured on the mummy while it was being wrapped might actually destroy it. The mummy of Tutankhamun, which had not been disturbed by tomb-robbers, was discovered in disastrous shape principally due to the shoddy workmanship of its embalmers. There was a third, less elaborate technique of mummification, however one which was as subject to foul-up as the most expensive process. In this less elaborate approach the body's inner cavity was cleared of perishable items by the insertion of an acid through the anal pore. The acid caused the viscera to disintegrate and was then allowed to drain out, after which the body was wrapped in linen.
Mummification having been completed, the actual funeral rites began. At the home of the deceased, with the mummy laid out in its coffin on a couch, a formal mourning took place (with numerous professional mourners hired for the occasion of a prominent person's funeral). Afterwards, a procession consisting of family, priests, friends, and bearers formed up and the body was carried to its tomb. The journey might have involved a trip by barge if the cemetery lay across the river from the deceased's home. At the tomb, various specific rites were performed, including the ritual of the "Opening of the Mouth"wherein a priest would symbolically break open the mouth of the body (or of a statue of the deceased) with a crook so that the spirits of the dead could return it at will. (The ritual was ,an elaborate one requiring more than one hundred separate actions on the part of the presiding priest.) After this, the mummy in its coffin was placed in the sarcophagus in the tomb's burial chamber. Then, as the procession of family and priests departed, the various grave offerings were carried into the burial chamber, after which the chamber was closed and the passage leading to it filled with rubble and debris. The used embalming equipment was then buried separately in a nearby pit. Back at the deceased person's home the funeral concluded with an elaborate funeral banquet presided over by the deceased's family.
