What is the process called that the Ancient Egyptians used to preserve the dead?
Mummification: The lost art of embalming the expressionless
For many people, mummies and mummification evoke a sense of the macabre — conjuring images of a grotesque, linen-wrapped monstrosity shambling through an ancient temple. Indeed, for many decades mummies have been in the casts of horror movies and gothic novels and filed away in the public imagination as belonging to arcane religious rites.
Simply mummification was a widespread and honored tradition in the ancient world, i that was imbued with deep religious significance and often performed past skilled specialists. It was practiced every bit a way to venerate the expressionless, or limited an important religious conventionalities — particularly a belief in an afterlife. Diverse cultures have been known to mummify their expressionless. The nearly well known are the ancient Egyptians, but the Chinese, the ancient people of the Canary Islands, the Guanches, and many pre-Columbian societies of Due south America, including the Incas, skilful mummification besides.
Related: Photos: Mummies discovered in tombs in ancient Egyptian metropolis
How are mummies made?
Mummification is the process of preserving the body after death by deliberately drying or embalming mankind. This typically involved removing moisture from a deceased body and using chemicals or natural preservatives, such as resin, to desiccate the flesh and organs.
Mummies are also created past unintentional or accidental processes, which is known equally "natural" mummification. This can happen when a expressionless trunk is exposed to extreme common cold, very dry conditions, or some other environmental factor that mitigates against decay.
The oldest mummy on record in North America, found at Spirit Cave, exterior of Fallon, Nevada, is an example of natural mummification. Wrapped in a Tule mat, it was constitute in a shallow grave and preserved by the dry atmosphere and rarefied air of the cave. Discovered in 1940, and originally believed to exist betwixt 1,500 and 2,000 years quondam, the private was subsequently radiocarbon dated in the 1990s and determined to exist over 10,000 years erstwhile, Alive Science previously reported (opens in new tab).
In contrast, the oldest known Egyptian mummy that was naturally preserved dates to but over 5,500 years agone, Live Scientific discipline reported (opens in new tab). That mummy was of a young adult female whose body was wrapped in linen and fur after she died.
Another famous naturally preserved mummy is the oldest known in Europe: Ötzi the Iceman, who lived about five,300 years agone. After Ötzi was murdered in what is at present the Italian Alps, his body was preserved in the snow and ice, until tourists discovered his remains in 1991.
Related: Mummy melodrama: Top 9 secrets about Ötzi the Iceman
The starting time civilization to exercise mummification
The oldest deliberately interred mummies were unearthed in the Camarones Valley of Chile. This valley is in the far north of the state, in a region chosen the Atacama Desert. A narrow strip of land betwixt the Pacific Sea and the Andes Mountains, this desert receives fiddling rainfall and is considered 1 of the driest places on Earth. The mummies there were constitute in 1917 by the German archeologist Max Uhle at Chinchorro Beach well-nigh the boondocks of Arica, CNN reported.
The mummies vest to what Uhle chosen the Chinchorro culture (9,000 to iii,100 years ago), who lived in what is at present southern Peru and northern Chile. Chinchorro people settled in coastal villages and relied on fishing every bit their main means of subsistence, using fishing hooks fabricated out of shellfish. They too hunted animals on country and gathered edible plants from the surrounding surface area.
Related: Desert dryness inspired mummy diverseness
The Chinchorro practice of mummification began around 7,000 years ago, some ii millennia earlier the offset known Egyptian mummies, according to the same CNN report. Although the exercise became more sophisticated over time, the basic process remained the aforementioned. It involved the removal of soft tissue, organs and brains. The hollow torso was then stale out and reassembled. The pare was stuffed with reeds, dried plants or other vegetal thing. Sticks were inserted into the arms and legs. Dirt masks were placed on the corpses' faces and wigs were often fastened. The finished mummy was so painted.
During the early phases of Chinchorro society (about 7,050 – four,500 years ago), mummies were painted with black manganese. From 2500 B.C. until the practice died out quondam during the start century B.C., scarlet ochre replaced the manganese. Not merely the aristocracy but all segments of Chinchorro society were mummified, including infants, children, adults and even fetuses.
Egyptian mummification
It was in ancient Egypt, however, that mummification reached its greatest elaboration. The first Egyptian mummies appear in the archaeological record at approximately 3500 B.C. By the fourth dimension of the Former Kingdom, or Historic period of the Pyramids (ca. 2686 – 2181 B.C.), mummification was well entrenched in Egyptian society. It became a mainstay during subsequent periods, reaching item heights of composure during the New Kingdom (ca. 1550 – 1069 B.C.). Unlike in Chinchorro society, mummification in ancient Egypt was typically reserved for the elite of club such every bit royalty, noble families, government officials and the wealthy. Common people were rarely mummified because the practice was expensive.
Related: ii mummies unearthed in ancient Egyptian cemetery where King Tut and other royalty were cached
Mummification in ancient Egypt was deeply entwined with the society'south religious beliefs. "The aboriginal Egyptians were obsessed with the afterlife," said Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptologist and expert in Egyptian papyri, or aboriginal texts, at the University of California, Berkeley. "They believed that at that place is another life later on the life here on Earth."
The aboriginal Egyptians believed that when a person died, their spiritual essence survived. This essence went on a journey where it encountered numerous divine and demonic beings, with its ultimate destiny to be judged past Osiris, the god of the dead. If found clean-living, the deceased was allowed to live with the gods in an eternal paradise.
"In club for the spiritual part of the deceased to make this journey, the body needed to stay intact," Lucarelli said. This was why the Egyptians placed such importance on mummification, and why the process was undertaken with meticulous care.
Unfortunately, there is lilliputian word of the actual process of mummification in ancient Egyptian texts, at to the lowest degree in the ones that have survived. What is discussed, Lucarelli noted, are the rituals involved in mummification rather than the nuts and bolts of the process. Instead, the particulars of the do accept come up down to us largely through non-Egyptian sources, such as the fifth century Greek writer Herodotus (opens in new tab) (lived 484 – 425 B.C.). In his famous work "The Histories," he described three levels of mummification, each distinguished from the other based on the effort and elaborateness of the process.
Related: Image gallery: Mummy evisceration techniques
The virtually elaborate method involved the removal of the brain and many of the internal organs showtime, particularly the contents of the abdomen. The brain was typically removed using a curved metallic implement that was inserted through the nostrils, while the other organs were removed by hand subsequently an incision was fabricated along the stomach. The empty cavity was filled with a variety of effluvious spices, such as myrrh and cassia (made from the bark of evergreen trees), earlier the body was stitched upwards.
"The heart was e'er left within," Lucarelli said, "because the Egyptians believed it was the most of import aspect of the person in that it contained the intellect."
The deceased was and so covered in table salt for 70 days to remove all moisture. After 70 days had passed, the body was washed and wrapped in linen. A sticky resin was practical to make sure the bandages adhered to the body. "The corpse is then handed over to the relatives," Herodotus wrote, "who enclose it in a hollow wooden coffin crafted to resemble a human which they accept made for this purpose, and once the coffin is airtight, they stow it away in a burial bedchamber" (translated by Thou.C. Macaulay, 2008).
Related: Photos: The amazing mummies of Republic of peru and Arab republic of egypt
A few hundred years later, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (lived 30 – ninety B.C.) who traveled to and wrote virtually Egypt, described boosted data about the process of mummification. In his book, "Library of History," Siculus noted that the men who performed the mummification, chosen embalmers, were skilled artisans who learned the skill as a family business concern. He wrote that embalmers were "considered worthy of every laurels and consideration, associating with the priests and even coming and going in the temples without hindrance." He described the work of these embalmers as so meticulous that "even the hair on the eyelids and brows remains, the entire appearance of the body is unchanged, and the cast of its shape is recognizable."
Egyptian mummification gradually faded out in the fourth century, when Rome ruled Arab republic of egypt. "Then with the appearance of Christianity, the mummification process ceased," Lucarelli said.
Today, except for very rare instances, mummification is a lost fine art. Well-nigh societies consider it bizarre or primitive; a leftover from a bygone time. Simply echoes of the procedure can nonetheless be seen in modern funeral homes where embalming the dead plays a office in honoring our loved ones.
Additional resources:
- Read more about Egyptian mummies from the Smithsonian.
- Watch a curt, animated video almost mummification from the Getty Museum.
- Larn more than about mummies in this interview with David Hurst Thomas, an archaeologist at the American Museum of Natural History.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/mummification.html
0 Response to "What is the process called that the Ancient Egyptians used to preserve the dead?"
Post a Comment