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The main process of mummification was preserving the body by dehydrating it using natron, a natural salt found in Wadi Natrun. The body was drained of any liquids and left with the skin, hair, and muscles preserved. [26] [full citation needed] The mummification process is said to have taken up to seventy days. During this process, special ...
A mummified man likely to be Ramesses I. A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions.
Mummification was a practice that the ancient Egyptians adopted because they believed that the body needed to be preserved in order for the dead to be reborn in the afterlife. [15] Initially, Egyptians thought that like Ra, their physical bodies, or Khat, would reawaken after they completed their journey through the underworld. [16]
Several other factors, including the decomposition process, the rate of desiccation, or drying out, and the compressive force of the wrappings, could all affect a mummy’s facial expression.
The distinguishing factor between the process of non-human animal and human mummification is when the two types were mummified. Humans had been mummified consistently since the days of the early peoples of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt , hundreds of years before even the first animals was mummified.
Excerebration is an ancient Egyptian mummification procedure of removal of the brain from corpses prior to actual embalming. Greek writer Herodotus, a frequent visitor to Egypt, wrote in the fifth century B.C. about the process, "Having agreed on a price, the bearers go away, and the workmen, left alone in their place, embalm the body. If they ...
This method was widely used in the pre-dynastic Egyptian period, before artificial mummification was developed. [7] The natural mummification that occurred with these dry sand burials may have led to the original Egyptian belief in an after-death survival and started the tradition of leaving food and implements for an afterlife. [8]
Masks of deceased people are part of traditions in many countries. The most important process of the funeral ceremony in ancient Egypt was the mummification of the body, which, after prayers and consecration, was put into a sarcophagus enameled and decorated with gold and gems. A special element of the rite was a sculpted mask, put on the face ...