II.

Practices and Beliefs

The Egyptians devoted great effort to preserving the lifelike appearance of corpses because they believed that the deceased needed physical bodies for the next life. They preserved bodies by drying them and placing them within a protective covering. Early practitioners wrapped the dried bodies in mats. In later years, the dried bodies were placed in wooden or stone coffins. Several styles of mummification were used, depending upon the wealth of the deceased’s family, but even bodies with minimal embalming remained preserved for many years when buried directly in the hot, dry sand.

The earliest Egyptian mummies, discovered at the southern city of Hierakonpolis, date from about the year 3400 bc. The embalmers had simply padded these bodies with linen and covered them with a pitch-like substance that sealed the body against moisture. In later burials, embalmers fully removed the body’s internal organs (stomach, lungs, liver, and intestines) in a process called evisceration. They placed the organs in special containers called canopic jars.

People devoted tremendous resources to mummification and funerals, especially in wealthy families, and they planned their burials well in advance. The burials of wealthy men or women included objects used during their lifetime as well as objects specially made for the tomb. The soul of the deceased was given guidance to the realm of the afterlife by religious texts such as the Book of the Dead, which contained charms designed to overcome dangers.

Many gods were associated with mummification. The jackal-headed god Anubis, known as “He who is in the [mummy] wrappings,” served as the guardian of a city’s burial area, called a necropolis. In most periods of Egyptian history, people believed that once the gods found the soul of the deceased to be morally acceptable, the deceased entered into an eternal afterlife ruled by Osiris, the god of the underworld. Osiris himself had been mummified by his faithful wife Isis, who gathered up his dismembered body after his death and bound it in a mummy-like fashion before burial.

The Egyptians believed that the soul of the deceased dwelled among these gods but did not lose full contact with the land of the living. One aspect of the soul, which the Egyptians represented as a human-headed bird called the ba, could leave the dark tomb. So too, the living could call upon their deceased relatives (most often by letters that they left in the tomb), imploring them for help curing illness, settling law suits, or promoting fertility.