When reading John Taylor’s “Changes in the Afterlife,” I found myself particularly interested in the section on treatment of the body and the discussion of mummification. While I know there is much left to be discussed on the topic of mummification overall, Taylor’s look at changes in mortuary practices and treatment of the body after death really helped give me ideas of where to go with my research paper for the class. Taylor’s section on the treatment of the body looked at differences of treatment of organs, skin, and wrappings over time and even briefly between upper and lower classes.
Taylor noted that the practice of formally disposing deceased individuals in the Nile Valley could be traced back to about 55,000 BCE and that a diversity of treatments began to be seen around 3,500 BCE. Starting around 2,500 BCE, written sources began to provide insight into motivations of treating the body – specifically that individuals were composed of their physical body and non-physical parts, called the ka and ba. It was believed that the connection between these parts was broken when individuals died, and the treatment of the body worked to restore that connection and in a way, make it a new kind of body.
Most interesting in this section, was the look at the process of mummification, which varied over time and classes. The preparation of the body involved a series of steps: purification of the body included opening the body to extract perishable internal organs and remove fluid content to decrease bacteria activity and to “[purge] the body of corruption products;” rebuilding the body included filling cavities with material such as linen or sawdust and performing cosmetic treatments to the surface of the body; the final step was the wrapping of the body in layers of linen and, in cases of the elite, a mask was placed over the head with an idealized image of the individual.
While some individuals were given special treatment, others were given very simple version of this process. Taylor mentioned Petrie’s findings of bodies from the 22nd through 25th Dynasties at Lahun and how many were wrapped, but few had more done to them than that and the bodies were mostly reduced to dust and bones within the wrappings, proposing that no formal preservation had taken place on these individuals like they would have on members of the elite or royals. Low status bodies found from the same time period in tombs at Saqqara appeared similarly with evidence of only being wrapped after their death.
I found your blog post very interesting because it echoes a lot of the independent research I am doing for my final paper in this class. We seem to have taken similar interests, not just in mummification, but in how mummification practices changed over time and the variation that can be observed between different classes of people.
While mummification was part of ancient Egyptian burial practice for countless millennia, it has very humble beginnings. In my research, I found some accounts of the oldest known burials in ancient Egypt. Before mummification was a full-blown, meticulous practice, the dead were just wrapped in cloth and bandages. Because of this, there was no preservation and the only thing left of the deceased individual was his or her skeletal remains. In later dynasties, however, the mummification process became increasingly more elaborate. Organs were removed from the body to ensure that it would dry out successfully, which made it possible for the body to survive for thousands of years. Mummification became even more intricate when the ancient Egyptians recreated the exact appearance of the person when he or she was alive. I’ve found some books that talk about how the ancient Egyptians would insert fake eyes into the eye sockets and stuff material under the skin to create an artificial facial contour. Some archaeologists have even found mummies that had their body shapes recreated.
Mummies intrigue just about everybody, and for good reason. A great deal of this fascination likely comes from the elaborate tombs and sarcophagi associate with the mummified bodies, but the physiological aspects of mummified bodies are equally interesting.
Interesting to see how many people looked at mortuary practices in their research paper! I’m doing a similar paper, specifically on how mortuary practice evolved as a whole over time. But mummification is definitely included in that! It is very interesting how mummification evolved. It makes you wonder if the evolution of the myth behind mummification was formed because of the natural mummification within the desert. Surely there must be aspects of it that changes with shifting ideology, something else I focus heavily on in my own paper. From what I’ve found, the body was embalmed with organs removed to symbolize the dismemberment of Osiris, who was dismembered by Set before his body parts were strewn across the land. So who knows if the chicken came before the egg in the case of mummification. The variation over class is reflected in all aspects of mortuary practice, and the differences in mummification is no exception. In reality, the immortality of the elite was more important than the immortality of the everyday people. It is baffling to think that sometimes the mummification process could take seventy days for the most elaborate of rituals. However, in something so ritualized and sacred, I supposed it would make sense. The pharaohs were, of course, the humanization of the gods in some cases. Don’t want to make any gods angry. And think of all the information archaeologists can get from those royal mummies! But it does make us feel for the people who merely were wrapped in simple linens. They definitely got the short end of the stick on that one.
I found that Taylor’s description of mummification during different time periods was interesting as well. I found that the changes of the actual physical differences between the periods to be captivating and would have enjoyed reading more on this topic. The overall reading was intriguing to say the least, but the mummification portion was the most interesting. I wondered, while reading, what made them change these practices. From putting their internal organs basically in jars to wrapping them in linen and placing them back in the body. I understand the purpose of doing it, but it still makes me wonder why. I guess I would need to read more on the religious beliefs of the afterlife of ancient Egyptians to really understand this.
I also found the way they prepared the actual body to be fascinating. From draining it of its fluids (how did they do this back then?) to the filling of the body with non-bodily items, I’m guessing, to make them look not dead. Sort of like embalming and fixing a body today that would be an open casket funeral. If you have ever seen this, the body of the person looks like it belongs more in a wax museum. However, they look sort of like they are sleeping, without the pallor of death.
The most interesting is that regardless of what practice they used, they did this to send them to the afterlife as a true replica of themselves. This to me means they believed the body transformed as a real body to cross into the afterlife, which is very different from Christianity in that Christians believe in the spiritual body after death.
I definitely would like to read more on this and I think your research paper would be very interesting to read when it is completed.