4
October The Egyptian Afterlife
and Mummification
The afterlife played a
very important role in the life of the Ancient Egyptians. One misconception is the belief that the
Ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with death.
It was just the opposite – they loved life and singing, dancing,
boating, etc. – and they wanted it to continue after death. To them, the afterlife was just an extension
of their earthy life, and much attention and effort was made to ensure that the
deceased had a safe passage to the afterlife and would have everything he would
need in the afterlife. They believed that the afterlife
mimicked their life on earth. As such
when a person died, not only was his body placed into a tomb, but also those
items that he would need to live in the afterlife – food, drink, personal
items, weapons, etc. The rituals performed after death – the funerary rites
mumification – were meant to ensure that the soul had a body to return to in
the afterlife or in the future if he chose to visit earth, while the tomb
itself would become the deceased’s eternal home if he chose to return to earth. Today, much of what we know about the Ancient Egyptians came
from their belief in immortality and that is why archaeologists focus much of
their attention on the tombs and pyramids and not on ancient cities. Tombs had to last an eternity and were built
of stone, while cities and homes were only needed for the short life duration
on Earth and, therefore, were built with mud bricks.
The ancient Egyptians
referred to the afterlife as the Field of Reeds and was a land very much like
the one they were on while living, except that it had no disease, sickness,
disappointments or death. A person
living in the afterlife would enjoy a day spent like one on earth, with all the
accoutrements but none of the displeasures.
An inscription on a 1400 BCE Egyptian tomb, best describes their beliefs
in the afterlife: “May I walk every
day unceasing on the banks of my water, may my soul rest on the branches of the
trees which I have planted, may I refresh myself in the shadow of my sycamore.”
However, to get to the
afterlife, one had to pass a series of steps or trials, presided over by
Osiris, the God of the Underworld and Judge of the Dead. These trials were held in the Hall of Truth
and involved the weighing of one’s heart against the weight of the feather of
truth. When a person died, his Akh (a
part of his soul or immortal, transformed self) would appear before Osiris, and
his Ab (heart which was considered the source of good and evil) would be
placed on a golden scale against the white feather of truth. If the heart weighed more than the feather,
the heart was devoured by Amut (a god known as the gobbler) and the soul ceased
to exist. If it is equal to or less than
the feather, the soul proceeds on into the Field of Reeds. There the soul would find everything from his
earlier home or existence – loved ones that had died earlier, his home,
favorite objects, his pets – all waiting for him in the Field of Reeds.
Because there was the
belief that the soul might be disoriented and confused when it first awoke in
the afterlife, paintings and inscriptions were done on the walls of the tomb
(or on the sarcophagi) to remind the soul of its prior life, comfort its
distress and disorientation, and to help it proceed to the next step. The paintings/inscription on the walls were
known as Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious works from Ancient Egypt that date
back to circa 2400-2300 BCE. The
writings on the sarcophagi grew from the Pyramid Texts and are known as the
Coffin Texts (circa 2134-1040 BCE) and they eventually merged into the Egyptian
Book of the Dead (circa 1550-1070 BCE).
The Book of the Dead
was a collection of mortuary texts or scripts, including those found in the
Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, that were written on papyrus and buried
with the deceased to protect and guide him in the afterlife – a basic manual on
how to reach the afterlife. These
collections included formulas, hymns, incantations, magical words and spells,
and prayers – the book is a compilation of writings from throughout Ancient
Egypt’s history. Although the existence
of this book was known as early as the Middle Ages, scholars were not able to
understand its contents. In 1846 Karl
Lepius, a German Egyptologist, was the first to translate the complete
manuscript of the book.
Mummification Preserving the Dead
When we think of mummification, our thoughts automatically
go the ancient Egyptians. However, the
oldest mummies were found in the Atacama Desert in Chile and are believed to
have been interred between 9,000 to 3,100 years ago. The Chinese and many pre-Columbian societies
of South America, Incas included, also practiced mummification. And in some cases, the mummification was a
natural process, such as a body buried thousands of years underneath snow and
ice. But since we are in Egypt, I will
limit this blog to the Egyptian process of mummification.
To the ancient Egyptians, eternal life was not limited to
preserving the spirit – the soul (ba) and the life force (ka) had to have a
body to return to or it would not survive and therefore the deceased would not
live on in the afterlife. They used Mummification
to ensure that the deceased had a body when he entered the afterlife. To keep the body from decaying, they followed
a very precise process and as it was part of a religious ritual, the embalmers
generally were priests. Priests selected
for this role were then trained in medicine and the use of preservatives (like
salt for drying out the body) – their work became the merging of the sacred and
the scientific.
The first Egyptian mummies date back to about 3500 BCE, but
it wasn’t until about 1550 BCE that the following 8 step process, considered by
many to be the best method, was developed.
This process took about 70 days to complete and was very expensive, so
only the very rich, like the pharaohs and other members of the royal family,
could afford it. Mummification lasted
until AD 392 when Theodosius II, emperor of Rome, banned the practice.
Step 1 Purification
of the body
Before any embalming could be started the body had to be
washed using water from the Nile River and palm wine.
Step2 Removal
of Internal Organs
A small incision was made on the left side of the body and the liver, lungs, intestines, and stomach were removed. The first incision was considered an act of honor and was performed by a priest called a “slitter.” ( I will talk more about slitters later in this blog.) The organs were then washed and packed in
 |
| Canopic Jars |
Step 3 Removal
of the Brain
Using a rod inserted through the nose into the skull, the
brain was broken apart and drained out of the nose. Considered to have no use in the afterlife,
the brain was thrown away.
Step 4 Body is
Left to Dry
To absorb the moisture in the body, both the inside and outside of the body were packed
with natron (a naturally occurring combination of sodium bicarbonate and sodium
chloride – baking soda and salt) and left for 40 days to dry out.
Step 5 Cleansing the Body
Once it had dried out, it was
again washed in water from the Nile River and covered with oils to keep the
skin elastic. The natron was removed
from inside the body and it was stuffed with sawdust and linen to make it look
human.
Step 6. Wrapping the Body in Linen
The head and neck were wrapped
first using strips of linen, followed by the fingers and toes, using liquid
resin as glue to hold the strips in place.
Finally, the arms and legs were wrapped separately and then tied
together. The body was then wrapped in
linen cloth or a shroud held together with strips of linen. The Egyptians believed that this process of
wrapping the body would facilitate a happy rebirth into the next life. There were usually seven layers of linen, and
if these were removed, the average weight of the mummy would then be about 5
pounds.
Step 7. Amulets placed with the
Body
Amulets (or charms) were placed
between the layers of linen to safeguard the body during its journey to the
afterlife. In addition to being place on
the deceased, many live Egyptians created symbolic objects that they believed
held magical properties. Some just
carried them around with them, while others had them made into jewelry that
would protect the wearer.
Step 8. Prayers or Spells
While the body was being
wrapped, a priest read spells out loud to ward off evil spirits. Many times, the priest would wear a mask of
Anubis (a jackal), the god the embalming process, death and the afterlife. Many of these spells were written on papyrus
paper and buried with the dead or were written on the walls of the tombs to
help guide the deceased to the afterlife.
As I wrote earlier, the task of making the first incision in
the body and removing the organs was done by slitters using sharp obsidian
knives. Making the first cut was a
position of honor, but the slitter given this honor may have thought
differently. To the ancient Egyptians
defiling a corpse was forbidden, but there was no way of proceeding with the
mummification process until the internal organs were removed. So, after the “honored” slitter made the
first ceremonial cut, he would immediately drop his tool and run away. People who were witnessing the embalming
would then give chase, throwing stones at him as punishment for defiling the
corpse, a job he had been hired to perform.
Although the stones were real, this stoning was not to the death but a kind
of brutal hijinks that today seems out of place at such a solemn ritual as
mummification.
In addition to the mummification of human bodies, there were
a menagerie of mummified animals that have been found in the pyramids along
with other artifacts. These animals
included royal cats, a lion, hippos, crocodiles, baboons, jackals, horses,
gerbils, birds, and even tiny fish. Considered
sacred, bull mummies were buried in their own private cemetery in Saqqara. Cats (including the domesticated cat, cheetahs,
and leopards) especially were considered sacred and were often placed inside
the tombs with their owners.
While in the US we consider the only absolutes to be taxes
and death, with taxes ending with death (except for death taxes), the Egyptians
believed that taxes also had to be paid in the afterlife. As wealthy Egyptians could send a substitute
to pay their taxes, they believed that they could continue this tradition after
death. They, therefore, included small
figurines, called ushabti, in their tombs that were inscribed with the spells
that the figurines would need to perform their deceased owner’s taxes. The result, however, was no dead Egyptian
ever paid any taxes!
Some mummies have been found to contain traces of coca and
nicotine leading some researchers to believe that some of the Ancient Egyptians
traveled to the Americas, although that theory has never been exclusively
proven.
To add a sense of the macabre to the mummification process,
during the Victorian Era in England, people were so enamored with mummies that
they would purchase them and then hold parties so guests could help unwrap the
linen layers.
And perhaps the most bizarre fact about mummies regarded
Ramesses II’s mummy. In 1974,
Egyptologists noticed that his mummy was deteriorating so they decided to fly
it to Paris for help in reversing the deterioration. The government issued him an Egyptian
passport for the flight listing him as King (Deceased).
No comments:
Post a Comment