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Contributor: Kathi Thomas. Lesson ID: 10598
Has a mummy ever spoken to you? They "talk" to scientists all the time! Embalming preserved a lot of information about ancient Egypt. Using video, online sources and some fruit, learn about embalming!
The tombs held in the Great Pyramids of Egypt have given archaeologists and historians a tremendous amount of information about the civilization and people of ancient Egypt. In many ways, they were a very advanced society, and because of their ritualistic methods of burial, scientists are discovering even more about how they lived and how they died. Why and how would the Ancient Egyptians mummify their dead?
In Ancient Egypt, preserving of the body of a person had important spiritual significance.
The Ancient Egyptians believed that if a person was not properly mummified, then the soul of the person would not be able to enter the afterlife, in which the soul and the physical body maintained a strong connection.
According to their religion, the Ba and Ka, two separate parts of the Egyptian soul, would need to reunite each evening in the physical corpse, after the Ba left the body each day to frolic in paradise. At night, the Ba and Ka would need to be able to find their way back to the correct body to rejoin for proper rest.
For this reason, it was critical to follow a very specific process to preserve the physical body in a way that would make it easily recognizable to its Ba and Ka. According to their religious beliefs, Ancient Egyptians needed to complete three steps in preparation for the afterlife.
Read about these steps by visiting Mr. Donn’s site to explore Mummies & the Afterlife (egypt.mrdonn.org). It is important to note that even though the heart was weighed for its good deeds, it was most often preserved and returned to the body cavity of the deceased person during mummification.
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